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OXFORD IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Lyra Frivola
Verses to Order
Second Strings

OXFORD IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

A. D. GOD LEY

AUTHOR OF "LYRA FRIVOLA " ETC.

WITH SIXTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS

METHUEN & CO.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

First Published in igo8

LmnAUY

UMVEKSn Y CF CALTPORNIA

515 SANTA BARBARA

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PREFACE

TV yr Y object in making this book has been
•'■*-^ to convey some idea of the conditions of
academic life at Oxford in the eighteenth century.
It seemed to me that the best way to do this was
to make a "subject catalogue" of the various
aspects of University life, and give each its separate
chapter or so. This is not an entirely satisfactory
method : but I do not know any that is better, —
unless one could write a good historical novel.
Certainly biographies, even of the most eminent
Vice-Chancellors and Proctors, or a chronological
narrative of events, would be even duller than
the present volume. However, I have added a
sort of "Who's Who" of Heads of Colleges, which
may be convenient. During the eighteenth century
Oxford was governed by "tyrannies" and close
oligarchies, so that Heads of Houses made Uni-
versity history as they are not allowed to do by
our modern regime of Boards and Committees.
The authorities for this period are very many,

vi OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

and most of them are easier to find than to read
when you have found them. I believe I have
consulted all that were likely to be useful to me :
that includes a great deal of printed matter, ancient
and modern, and a little manuscript, such as the
still unprinted part of Hearne's Diary. I am under
a special obligation to the Provost of Queen's
College, who has allowed me to see a MS. Memoir
which throws some light on Oxford society : and
to Mr. F. Madan and Mr. T. W. Jackson, for the
help which they have given me in the Bodleian
Library and the Hope Collection. Among modern
volumes, those to which I am most indebted are
the publications of the Oxford Historical Society :
Messrs. Robinson's series of College Histories :
and most of all, of course, Mr. Christopher Words-
worth's invaluable works of reference, Scholce
AcademiccB, and Social Life at the Universities in
the Eighteenth Century. The author of a volume
like mine must necessarily be like "a very barren,
dull Writer" mentioned by Hearne, who "rakes
together what he can of other men's, and builds
upon them " : I can only say that I have tried not
to be one who "oftentimes" (as the Diary goes
on to say) ** does them a great deal of injustice."

CONTENTS

I. Introduction

II. Local Habitation

III. Teaching .

IV. Fellowships

V. College Life

VI. Discipline .

154

VII, Exercises and Examinations

168

VIII. Reforms and Reformers

198

IX. Politics and Persecutions

220

Appendix .

281

Index

287

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

OXFORD FROM THE South-West . • • Frontispiece

From an Engraving by J. Skelton

North Gate . • • ' , * • '

From an Engraving by J. SkeltON. after the Drawing
by J. B. Malchair

St. Giles' . • • • * * . *

From an Engraving by J. Skelton. after the Drawing
by A. ROOKER

RICHARD Newton • • '.',,.'

From an Engraving after the Painting in Hertford
College

William Lancaster • • • • *

From an Engraving after the Painting by T. MURRAY

THOMAS WaRTON . • . • _. \^'

From an Engraving after the Pamtmg by Sir JOSHUA
Reynolds

Greek Hall .••***
From an Engraving by J. Skelton

Joseph Addison .••***

From an Engraving after the Painting by G. Kneller

Merton • • • * *

From an Engraving by J. Skelton. after the Drawing
by J. Malchair

FACING PAGE
. 24

102

115

122

X OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

FACING PAGE

Queen's Hall . . . . . . .140

From an Engraving by J. Skelton

Broad Street . . . . . . .186

From an Engraving by J. Skelton, after the Drawing
by J. Malchair

Cyril Jackson . . . . . . .214

From an Engraving by Chas. TURNER, after the Paint-
ing by Wm. Owen, R.A.

Henry Sacheverell ...... 234

From the Painting in the Hall at Magdalen College

East Gate . . ..... 242

From an Engraving by J. Skelton

John Wesley ....... 266

From an Engraving by J. Faber, after the Painting by
J. Williams

Carfax ........ 278

From an Engraving by J. Skelton, after the Drawing

by J. DONOWELL

OXFORD IN THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

INTRODUCTION

THE once-established division of history into
centuries of the Christian era has, no doubt,
its conveniences. But events and characteristics
do not group themselves, unfortunately, on that
principle : and one is apt to be led into dangerous
excesses of doubtful generalisation, in so far as the
character of a century is derived from the perform-
ance of one half of it ; the remainder being quite
unjustly praised for the virtues or blamed for the
faults of that moiety of the age which is more
picturesquely virtuous or vicious — which appeals, in
short, more obviously to the imagination. Thus
we generalise about the nineteenth century, which
really did not begin until a third of it was over.
But the eighteenth is more satisfying : with due
allowance made for moments when it was rather
I

2 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

less " eighteenth " than usual, — especially towards
its close, — between 1700 or so and 1800 or there-
abouts, lies a chapter of English history, more
or less homogeneous. If the affinities between its
beginning and its end are not very striking, it is
easier to see the resemblance between the two
extremes and the middle — the central decades of
the century which exhibit its general character in
its most pronounced form : and things which are
like the same, if they are not necessarily like
each other, have at least a link. It is, therefore,
possible to say that there was a real and not
merely a chronological eighteenth century : and if
this is true of England in general, it is probably
also true of Oxford in particular.

One has to admit that so far as the University
of Oxford is concerned, the history of the years
between 1700 and 1800 is open to one large
and general condemnation. It is dull. It is
neither obviously attractive to write, nor (I fear)
easy to read. Historians of seventeenth century
Oxford have moving accidents to describe : the
day is not a day of small things : the Uni-
versity is linked closely with the events of great
and stirring times, years of passionate devotions
and aspirations. If the century of Stuart rule
was not exactly an age of academic progress, at
least Universities advanced learning by the pro-
duction of ponderous volumes. If the story
of nineteenth century Oxford is ever written, it

INTRODUCTION 3

will be a record of the attempts of reformers within
and without to accommodate academic tradition to
the changing thought of the age : and the steps of
change will be marked by definite moments. Even
now, near as we are to it, one sees the academic
history of the last century falling quite naturally
and easily into definite chapters, none of them
without interest. But in the eighteenth, while
change was no doubt at work largely, there is
no very obvious special stamp to affix to the
whole age ; and while the Oxford of the beginning
years differs widely from Oxford of the middle
decades, and toto ccelo from Oxford of the end,
mainly because of influences that were at work in
English society and affected the life of Universities
only as parts of that society ; yet it cannot be said
that the modern reader, who naturally looks to be
fed with the story of Causes and Movements and
Tendencies, will find much to satisfy his appetite.
There were no causes or movements (except one,
which the University did its best to suppress) in
eighteenth century Oxford : and the historian who
tries to trace "developments" has to grope in
a jungle of unimportant and inconsistent detail.
Many things happened. But the movements were
those of the individuals in a crowd which in the
mass is either stationary or progressing very slowly.
All the while, the forces were at work which
were to shape the Oxford which we have known :
but they were not working very obviously. It

4 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

was like the sea of the Iliad that surges this
way and that

6a<TOfi€vo<i Xtyimv dve/xoiv \aL-^7}pa Kekeuda,

looking for the violent coming of the loud winds, —
which blow in due time with no uncertainty of
direction.

The characteristics of Oxford at this time as at
all times were those of its age, more or less : and it
is useless to deny that there are many aspects of
life in the early Hanoverian reigns which lend
themselves to criticism. If the criticism has been
sometimes a little overdone and lacking in due dis-
crimination,— if, because some forms of progress
are not conspicuous, it has occasionally failed to
recognise any, — the eighteenth century remains
open to the charge of being quite different from the
nineteenth. The time, no doubt, was one of
reaction from the stormy enthusiasms of the Civil
Wars. It is easy, and not unjust, to say that the
generation which lived under Anne and the first
two Georges was too keenly conscious of the com-
motions and dangers which may follow from not
accepting the world as you find it. Their own
society was well content, therefore, to acquiesce in
forms : not to associate abstract questionings of
ideal Right and Wrong too closely with practical life :
to respect formulae as the embodiment of eternal
laws, and to write down as an "Enthusiast" (a

INTRODUCTION 5

term of mere abuse in the eighteenth century) the
man whom formulae failed to satisfy. England had
had enough of zealots, and was content to acquiesce
for a time in mere common sense : a relapse into
which is even a desirable "rest cure "for nations
occasionally. Of course, a narrow utilitarian view
of conduct is not at all incompatible with the largest
and most elevating generalisations : of which the
eighteenth century is prolific, without being in the
least hypocritical. There were not probably more
Tartuffes and Pecksniffs in England then than at
other and happier periods : simply this very re-
markable age did genuinely believe that it is quite
consistent to enunciate an edifying law of conduct,
and to stigmatise those who take it too literally
as dangers to society, — being the very millennium of
a kind of illogical reason. What appeals to the
taste of the time and forms its conduct is that
which makes for immediate stability. No diplo-
matist was ever more devoted to a status quo.

Historians who deal with the academic records
of this unlucky era hardly take their subject
seriously. They dismiss it in a contemptuous
phrase, — " Euthanasia of the Eighteenth Century"
or the like, — a thing not to be reasoned of, but
looked at and left as quickly as may be. They
relate its only too frequent scandals with an ironic
tolerance, — it has no character to lose, and nothing
better can be expected. Satirists never had a more
obvious cockshy. If this period has any useful

6 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

function, it is to serve partly as the "drunken
Helot" of academic history — an awful warning to
the Universities of our great commercial towns ;
and partly as a foil to the storm and stress of the
seventeenth and the respectable activities of the
later nineteenth century. One hardly hopes, at the
beginning of the twentieth, to justify so discredit-
able an age at the bar of public opinion. We
blame its ultra-conservatism and shallowness and
sometimes cynical scepticism : we laugh at the
stilted poses and phrases of the early Georgians,
their formalism in dress and manner, their ex-
aggeration of outward decorum ; in literature their
tendency to compose "without the eye on the
object " ; their reversion to classic models which
have gone out of fashion or are (as we think) more
intelligently used. Within and without Universities,
they are the less excusable in our eyes for their
various weaknesses, because, with social conditions
rapidly approximating to our own, their habits of
thought were so alien : whereas in the preceding
age a society quite unlike ours in externals had
intellectually and morally its points of contact with
the Victorian era. The eighteenth century gave us
all kinds of good gifts by which the nineteenth has
profited — inventions, conquests, ideals of comfort,
substantial prosperity, diffusion of knowledge, and,
in short, most of the elements of complete civilisa-
tion. It patronised learning theoretically, and
even practically. Bishoprics rewarded the heads

INTRODUCTION 7

of presumably learned societies with a frequency
not since observable. It was possible to collect
;^9000 to enable Kennicott to continue his Hebrew
studies. Certainly society was neither Philistine
nor unprogressive : but the progress was unin-
tentional and almost unfelt. Morally and intel-
lectually, the ethos of that part of the century
which has given a character to the whole differed
altogether from ours. It was not imaginative, nor
was it humanitarian. And the Universities of an
age like this, which, although in common fairness
they should be considered in relation to the temper
of their time, must still ultimately stand or fall in
our judgment by their relation to our moral and
intellectual ideals, could hardly expect to satisfy
modern criticism. The failings of society in
general may be palliated. The alleged moral
delinquencies of bygone generations may be for-
given to a nation, or balanced by various kinds of
achievement : but Universities which do not aspire
above the common level of their time lose their
reason of existence. The eighteenth century, it is
said, if coarse and material, was sane and vigorous.
Oxford during most of the century was quite in
sympathy with the tone of the country in general
(in which respect comparison might be drawn not
altogether favourable to learned societies of a
later time) : but Universities cannot afford to be
only sane and vigorous. Being of its age, Oxford
had the defects of the period : and perhaps some-

8 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

times in an exaggerated farm. It is undoubtedly-
true that the tendencies generally associated
with the eighteenth century are precisely those
which are apt to run to extremes in seats of
learning. Formalism, inordinate reverence for
" indolent tradition," dull devotion to a status
quo — these are faults for which Oxford and
Cambridge have often been reproached, and some-
times reproached with truth : grave and sober
persons, naturally suspicious of popular caprice,
surrounded by scenes which are the embodiment
of venerable tradition, and governing themselves
and their pupils by the very stability of their con-
stitution, inevitably tend to develop a spirit of
ultra-conservatism. Every College has something
in it of the spirit of convention and tradition, even
now : and in the reign of Anne and the first
Georges, Universities must have found it especially
easy and natural to live according to the disposi-
tion which is still a guiding or restraining force
amid the Movements of the present day. This
must be confessed. Yet the fact should be
emphasised that it is only the middle decades of
the century that were torpid and apathetic. Before
them, academic authorities were vigorously doing
their best — it was sadly needed — in the interest of
decency and good order : and after them, if the
University of Oxford was not in the strictest sense
of the term progressive, it was at least eminently
respectable, and even respected. The nineteenth

INTRODUCTION g

century cannot claim credit for everything. That
no doubt active period owed to the eighteenth the
machinery which facilitated its activities — systems
of College government and University examination.
Honour examinations were invented before 1800.
If we are entitled to blame the slowness of progress
and the continued toleration of negligence in teach-
ing and farcical examinations, yet let the state of
Oxford at the beginning of the century be compared
with its state in 1800. It is a change from disorder
to order in Colleges : in the University, the sub-
stitution (at last) of a modern and stimulating
system of honour examinations for medieval
exercises. The eighteenth century started its
course heavily handicapped by the seventeenth.
Some such reflections may help a little to guard
against an excess of that moral and intellectual
"superiority" which refuses to acknowledge the
existence of good between the English and the
French Revolution. If the strangeness of the
middle part of the century is acknowledged and
cannot really be defended, yet even then much that
obviously offends our no doubt finer sense is after
all a matter of changing national fashion, which has
often very little to do with the eternal laws of right
and wrong : and if we are shocked by some of the
academic customs of our early Georgian ancestors,
it is certain that they would have been at least
equally shocked by a good many of ours. More-
over, it is not always right to deduce actual vicious-

lo OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

ness from the conventionally gross phraseology of
an age less decorous than our own.

English Universities are not often popular.
When they have attained to a respectable age, any
stick is good enough to beat them with : and a good
many sticks undertake the task. Their directors —
whether regarded, on the intellectual side, as
pedants pursuing presumably useless knowledge,
or on the social side as semi-monastic inhabitants
of Colleges, mere homes for self-indulgent un-
practical idlers — have seldom been loved by the
public : from which, indeed, even as educators of
youth they somehow stand apart. They are dis-
liked for a supposed difference from ordinary men :
they are liable to the imputation of priggishness :
and are blamed most of all — paradoxically, if rightly
— when they are found to be really no better than
the generality : for then they are falling below
their proper function. If we are to believe some
contemporary authorities, it is the latter charge to
which academic society of two hundred years ago
was especially exposed. Some records of the
period teem with notices of the vices of Dons :
Hearne's Diary, Amherst's Terrce Filius, and
the well-known aspersions of Gibbon (to take the
three probably best known and most often quoted
sources of the discredit attaching to contemporary
Dons as a class) really seem at first sight to leave
many academic dignitaries of the earlier eighteenth
century without a rag of character. ,

INTRODUCTION 1 1

But Dons are not always as black as they are
painted. They have almost always suffered in the
description. They have none to praise and very
few to love them. They seldom — at least, at
Oxford — eulogise each other : and are almost
invariably censured, when thought worthy of
mention at all, by undergraduates, — among whom
it is still a mark of intellectual superiority, to criticise
your pastor and master. Moreover, the testimony
of the three above-mentioned authorities is not
wholly or always beyond suspicion. Gibbon's im-
pressions were those of a boy of fifteen. Hearne
was a diarist, Amherst a satirist : naturally with
both censure predominates : no one writes satire,
and few keep a diary, primarily for the purpose
of eulogising their friends. It is still more to the
point to remember the political partisanships of
the time. Amherst was a Whig who liked his
fling at Tory Dons, — who, in fact, rusticated him :
while to Hearne all vices and all meannesses are
the natural and inevitable attributes of what he
calls a "Whigg": he is quite unable to write
tolerantly of any one except an " Honest" man, —
that is, one who is at least a Nonjuror, if not
a Jacobite. In that age of violent party feud,
personalities are singularly open to suspicion
as materials for history. Even Hearne's and
Amherst's Oxford — not to mention the worthier
academic society of the later decades of the
century — produced many good governors of

12 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

their respective foundations : virtuous men have
lived before the Victorian era.

These attacks on individuals are not always a
very serious matter. It is more difficult to defend
eighteenth century ideals of academic education
and erudition : no apologists have succeeded in dis-
proving the charges of slackness and stagnation
which are brought against the University in
general. When all has been said, it remains un-
deniable that the University's output of erudition
was not very large, and that exercises for degrees,
if eventually reformed, yet remained for too long
archaic in theory and in practice a farce : and if
the country did not as yet criticise its Universities
as we have learnt to do, yet the falling off of
numbers indicates a want of confidence. In this
respect Cambridge suffered more than Oxford — a
thing not very easy to account for.

It is sometimes suggested that this torpor is
the natural reaction, the lassitude which inevitably
supervenes, after the storm and stress and turbulent
activity of the Civil War period. This is a plausible
and comfortable theory, and even contains some
truth. Fellows of Colleges certainly no longer
tasted the bitterness of expulsion and the fierce
joys of restoration, — things of which there was
living memory in the early century : and perhaps
the too vivid sense of secure possession of material
comforts may have so far engrossed their minds
that they had no thoughts to spare for anything

INTRODUCTION 13

else. But the "reaction" theory will not account
for everything : nor as a matter of fact is it quite
borne out by history. In Oxford at least, that
home of lost causes, there was no reaction from
political activity.

Party feeling ran high, even for that age of
partisanship : the storm of politics raged in the
academic teapot with quite as much violence as
in the world outside. Changed circumstances no
doubt prevented zeal from being translated into
action : but the seventeenth century spirit was still
alive : Fellows of Colleges were not far removed in
sentiment from their predecessors who had drilled
in Merton Fields or Broken Heys for King Charles,
or even ridden with Rupert to beat up the Parlia-
mentary outposts among the hills and woods of the
Buckinghamshire border. Nor again (although it
is true that some of the faults of Universities have
a special kinship with the alleged failings of the
eighteenth century) can the inactivity of Oxford be
accounted for as a mere reflection of the temper of
the times. If this were so we should expect to find
these same accusations of educational inefficiency
directed against Cambridge as well as Oxford : and
this is precisely what we do not find. Cambridge
had her shortcomings, as judged by a nineteenth
century standard. Some of her professorships
were sinecures, and some of her exercises for degrees
were inadequate tests of the intellect. But on the
whole it must be confessed that Oxford, educationally

14 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

speaking, falls short of the not very exalted level
attained by the sister University : Cambridge men
may claim that in comparison with ourselves they
were sober and industrious learners and teachers —
essaying perhaps a less varied and less ambitious
programme, but doing what they did with relative
diligence.

It is probably in the circumstances of this
difference between the two Universities that we
should look for the real reason of Oxonian inactivity,
so far as education is concerned, during the great
part of the century under discussion. Cambridge
suffered far less from the Civil Wars than did
Oxford : her house in 1 700 or so needed far less
setting in order. But also — and here perhaps the
Civil War may be a vera causa — the fact is that
Oxford and Cambridge have during the past two
hundred years regarded the outside world from
a very different standpoint. The elder sister has
never stood apart from the great events of English
history. Parliaments and Courts have sat in
Oxford : she has even been a kind of second capital
of England : and if the town and gown rows of the
Victorian era (extinct in this more peaceful age)
were not actually the beginnings of civil war, as in
the days of which the poetical chronicler writes that

" When Oxford draws knife
England's soon at strife,"

still her interests have never been strictly local.
She has even been too anxious to emphasise her

INTRODUCTION i 5

membership in the whole body politic, to keep in
touch with the great world, to treat public opinion
occasionally as a gallery to be played to, more often
as a foe to be fought, but in any case not as merely
negligible and outside the sphere of academic
interests. Cambridge in days of external storm and
stress has been more content to isolate herself from
the world : her sages, like him of the Republic, have
preferred generally to shelter themselves under a
wall until evil days should be overpast rather than
to face the arena of politics : in rowing language
they have *' kept their eyes in the boat " : the
movements initiated at Oxford have been in the
end national rather than strictly academic. The
keenest Oxonian activity has been directed into
external rather than Oxonian channels. It is indeed
only in comparatively recent days that the waters
of the I sis have been seriously troubled by strictly
educational controversies : and then it was the Cam
that set the example. The two principles, one of
which does and the other does not look beyond the
bounds of the University, — the two systems, which
respectively treat the undergraduate primarily as a
recipient of the liberal arts and as a potential
servant of the State, — are both very good in their
different ways : but they may both lead to injurious
extremes: and if Oxford, the "Jacobite capital"
of the kingdom, was only playing her natural part
in allowing her attention to be deeply engrossed by
the Whig-versus-Tory partisanships of the earlier

1 6 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

eighteenth century, her studies could not but suffer.
Political acerbity very often goes hand in hand with
intellectual narrowness and dulness. " Those that
are most noisy among you upon the Topicks of
Church and State," says a Whig to a Tory Master
of Arts in an imaginary Oxford Dialogue of 1 705,
"are the least learned; and indeed this engrosses
their time so much, that neither Discipline nor
Learning nor even the Prayers in your Chapels,
however loud their cry for the Church is, are
regarded by them." The Civil War and the
Restoration had done their work only too well in
Oxford in bringing her still more closely into touch
with politics. There was a general wish, say the
historians of New College, to return to the older
and better ways ; but the old simplicity of life was
gone. Nor should it be forgotten that in the earlier
part of this "century of stagnation," Colleges had
many internal questions to distract their attention.
English society was going through a period of
transformation : and Colleges had to reconstitute
themselves to suit the changing order of things.
Hence Hearne writes in 1726 that all Colleges are
now so much engaged in "law businesses and
quarrels, that good letters miserably decay every
day." At the last ordination, fifteen candidates
were "deny'd orders for Insufficiency." (This,
says the malicious diarist, is the more to be noted
"because our Bishops and those employed by them
are themselves generally illiterate men.")

INTRODUCTION 17

It may then be stated broadly — and I hope
the statement will be confirmed by later pages —
that the period of least academical efficiency
coincides with the reigns of the first two Georges.
This, at least, is the dark age for most Colleges ; and
it was during these years that Oxford was passing
through a stage of bitter discontent and opposition.
Good Liberals may draw the inference that we have
here one more proof of the invariable alliance
between Tory principles and intellectual obscur-
antism. Without going so far as that, one may
probably conclude that the proper business of
College and University was ill done because
Dons thought too much about politics.

Similarly, as political bitterness begins to dis-
appear, we find Colleges, on the whole, beginning
to pay more attention to the claims of learning and
education. As the eighteenth century advanced
it became more and more, in the words of its
historian, the age of the diffusion of knowledge :
sooner or later this was bound to affect the studies
of Oxford : meantime, the growing civilisation of
the country in general, with improving facilities of
communication, was daily bringing the University
more and more into touch not only with politics,
but with all aspects of English life, introducing
Oxford to larger and wider interests, more com-
patible with reasonable academic ideals than the
old Whig and Tory animosities had been.

But as one looks at different periods in the

1 8 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

academic life of the century, how difficult it is to
speak broadly of improvement and decadence, —
to use phrases of general application to all the
complex existence of the University ! Like the
Thames at Oxford, progress has many channels :
here the current is rapid, there it is sluggish ; now
it is a broad and deep river, there a narrow and
half-unknown backwater. According to the point
on which they fix their eyes, critics will still differ
as to whether good or evil predominates at a
particular moment ; and if they generalise, as they
will, their generalisations are sure to be contra-
dictory. It is largely a matter of temperament.
To one reader, the earliest years of the eighteenth
century are years of turbulence, but much laudable
effort. To another, they are a time of idle squabbles ;
and the long peace from 1720 (when, according to
some, Oxford was merely torpid) " restored England
and restored Oxford " — to the state of perfection
described in Mr. Gibbon's Autobiography. To
one, it is sufficient that Oxford should have produced
the few who were really eminent in their respective
branches of learning : another will point to the
damning fact that these shining lights only em-
phasise the surrounding darkness. Oxford has so
many aspects, and so varied an output, that these
discrepancies will still appear. There is failure
here, there is success there. By which shall she
be judged .f* Perhaps Colleges cannot be praised
for the after-performance of their alumni, and

INTRODUCTION 19

the alleged inefficiency of Magdalen teaching cannot
be balanced by the fact that the College was
privileged to entertain for a while the authors of the
Decline and Fall and the "Ode to Evening."
Yet it is fair to point out that a period of incapable
teaching and ridiculous examinations may produce
Butlers or Wesleys, a Home, a Routh, — both
Magdalen men, — or a Blackstone ; and the Oxford
of his day can be described by Berkeley as an ideal
retreat for learning and piety. Are we to condemn
one age because it falls short of doing the special
work approved by another ? We must first settle
what is the End of Universities. "These are the
riddles nobody can solve " — or rather, of which
every one has a different solution.

LOCAL HABITATION

THE hand of the nineteenth century has been
heavy on Oxford ; and, to all appearance,
the twentieth will be no kinder. Speculative
builders have set the ancient city in an unattractive
frame of brick. Villadom, more or less elegant,
fringes her approaches from northern Wolvercote
to southern Iffley. Municipal and private enterprise
decorates the High Street and the Cornmarket
and St. Aldates' with buildings which reconcile
ornateness with efficiency by superimposing a blend
of half a dozen incongruous styles on the practical
necessity of a shopfront. Colleges should know
better, and sometimes do. Their own taste and
public criticism has done much in recent years to
save them ; but even they have suffered many
things at the hands of too ambitious architects.

Looking down over the Thames Valley from
some height of the "warm green-muffled Cumnor
hills " — themselves, alas that such a fate should
have befallen the classic solitudes haunted by
echoes and memories of Thyrsis and the Scholar
Gipsy ! now too often turned into eligible building

LOCAL HABITATION 21

lots — looking from these erstwhile pleasant places
one sees the smallness of old Oxford, a tiny oasis of
grey in a wilderness of red brick : and one realises
also what must have been the beauty of that group
of spires and towers and ancient walls when nothing
surrounded it but green fields, intersected by the
network of waterways that bound the town to east
and west. We have enlarged our borders indeed,
at the expense of picturesqueness, in the last thirty
years. But the general plan of the aarv, the true
city, has not been substantially changed in the last
three centuries ; the ravages of improvement have
not straightened the High nor widened the Turl,
— except in a few unimportant respects the plan of
streets and lanes remains intact ; and most of our
accretions are of so recent date that living memory
can recall a town which in outline was only sub-
stantially different from Hyde's map of 1733 — and
even the Oxford of 1675 as drawn in Loggan's —
in respect of the large additions and alterations
made between the line of St. Giles' and the river.
Most of the familiar features are there already in
the old maps, — even to the germ of a transpontine
suburb on the way to Iffley and Cowley.

It is harder to visualise the detail of streets as
they existed in the early part of the eighteenth
century. To form any picture of that, one must
go now to the architecture of such small country
towns as lie aside from the lines of modern civilisa-
tion and have therefore preserved their Tudor or

22 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Jacobean architectural minutiae with little substantial
alteration : old Cots wold towns, such as Burford
or Campden, are the best object-lesson — to go no
farther than the regions accessible from Oxford.
Here alone the general prevailing type is that of the
late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries — high-pitched
roofs, gabled fronts, timbered walls, mullioned
windows, projecting upper stories — all, in short, that
both the eighteenth century and we ourselves have
destroyed, our forefathers with a cheerful conviction
of rectitude, we with at least a blush. Few ages
admire the work of their immediate predecessors
in architecture. Perhaps we may boast ourselves
to be more catholic in our appreciations : apparently
we can seldom build, but — except when the appeal
to utility is too strong — we can refrain from destroy-
ing : so far as actual demolition goes, our record,
considering the increase of temptation, may be
considered good. Antiquity appeals to us as it
did not to the Perpendicular builders who substi-
tuted their work for much of Decorated and
Early English, or to the Classical revivalists who
condemned Norman, Early English, Decorated,
Perpendicular, and Elizabethan alike as " Gothic
and barbarous." They destroyed much of it ; but
they were justified to a certain extent by their
sincere conviction that they were right and the
*' Gothic " builders wrong. Addison could only
admire the great Cathedral of Siena with reser-
vation, as a good example of a kind naturally bad.

LOCAL HABITATION 23

When this is all that the educated taste of that
age can say of Italian Gothic — which of course
partakes much more of the classical than does
the style of great French or English churches —
one cannot well wonder that the learned Zachary
Uffenbach, who visited Oxford in 17 10, dismisses
the Tower and Cloisters of Magdalen in a con-
temptuous phrase as "old and bad."

"Oxford" (so writes in 1773 the Rev. Sir J.
Peshall, editing Anthony Wood) " is better seen than
described. The magnificent Colleges, and other
most noble Edifices, standing in, and giving an
Air of Grandeur to the Streets : the many delightful
Walks : elegant Gardens : rich Chapels : grand
Libraries : the Beauty of the Meadows and Rivers,
that on every Side delight the Eye : the Sweetness
of the Air : the Learning, and frequent public
Display of it, and the Politeness of the Place : the
Harmony and Order of Discipline : not to mention
the great Number of Strangers that continually
visit us, and express their Satisfaction, conspire
to render it the Delight and Ornament of the
Kingdom, not to say of the World." Among
the multitude of detractors, this whole-hearted
enthusiasm (even for the Oxford climate, which has
been praised by few) is very gratifying. But the
learned Uffenbach is not easily moved to these
raptures. He is not among those who "express
their satisfaction." He is nearly always cold, and
for the most part contemptuous. What strikes

24 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

him on his first arrival at Oxford from Cambridge
is that it is merely an open town, like a great
village [ein grosses Dorf). And of course the
town had long passed beyond the limit of its
medieval fortifications. Walls were probably little
more in evidence than they are at present ; but
gateways marked the southern, eastern, and
northern approaches. Uffenbach entered by the
famous gate called Bocardo, situated close to St.
Michael's Church at the end of North Gate Street
— the Cornmarket as we call it now : the gateway
takes its name from the prison which formed part
of the same building, — a name of unknown origin.
**This prison," says Mr. Boase, "may have been
so named, sarcastically, from the form of syllogism
called Bocardo, out of which the reasoner could
not ' bring himself back into his first figure ' without
the use of special processes : " but Wood, or his
editor, Peshall, has a different explanation. **We
find Brocardia from our Lawyers to signify . . .
a contentious Matter full of significations and
opinions. Now whether such Matters were acted
here, and the Place so called by a Metonymy, I
know not ; but notwithstanding (to speak Theo-
logically) in the Times of the Old Testament the
Gates of the City were used as seats of Judgment,
Administration of Justice, and Decision of con-
troversy." Origo in obscuro. But that there was
a prison over the Gate, the city gaol, in fact, there
is no doubt : John and Charles Wesley visited the

LOCAL HABITATION 25

prisoners : these " Bocardo birds," as they were
called, used to beg from passers-by, letting down
a hat out of their window. Here was " the Bishop's
Hole, a most horrible dungeon." Gateway and
prison were pulled down in 177 1, when the East
Gate was also destroyed. The picture in Skelton
represents this last as a structure evidently of no
great antiquity, to judge from the style of archi-
tecture, marking the limit of the town just west of
the junction of Longwall and High Street. South
Gate had been in Fish Street — now St. Aldates' —
just below Christ Church ; but had been demolished
before the beginning of the eighteenth century.

Another ingress was provided by " Littlegate,"
only a few hundred yards to the west of South
Gate, originally comnunicating with a ford or
watering-place in the river. This existed through
the eighteenth century, though very much dilapi-
dated. But travellers from the west approached
Oxford by the ** Botley Causeway," passing the
site and remains of Osney and Rewley Abbey —
part of the buildings of the latter was still visible
in the last quarter of the eighteenth century — and
entering the town by Bocardo by way of Hythe
Bridge Street and what is now George Street,
immediately north of the ground called " Broken
Heys." The Causeway is apparently indicated in
Agas' map. By 1771 the historian can say that
the "West Entrance, for above a Mile, over seven
raised modern elegant Bridges of white Stone, is

26 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

very beautiful." We have changed all that, so far
as beauty is concerned. But there are still seven
bridges.

These various approaches converged then as now
on the historic crossroads of Carfax, the Quatervois
or Quadrivium of many memories : the rallying-
place for the town in the old days of battle, as on
that day of S. Scholastica in February 1353, when
certain angry citizens "out of propensed malice,
seeking all occasion of conflict with the scholars
. . . caused the Town Bell at St, Martin's to be
rung, that the commonalty might be summoned
together : whereon followed much riot and blood-
shed." Carfax had also its traditions of civic
government. Here was " Pennyless Bench," where
"the Mayor and his Brethren meet occasionally on
public affairs ; and if Tradition and History inform
us right, this was the Seat frequently of the Muses :
and that many Wits were Benchers here." In the
eighteenth century it was a shelter, built by the
City at the east end of Carfax Church, to protect
market women from rain. But in 1747 it was
removed : having apparently become a resort of dis-
orderly people. Close by, in the centre of the con-
verging roads, stood the celebrated Carfax conduit,
which for a hundred and fifty years supplied Oxford
with water from the hill above North Hinksey. It
was erected by Otho Nicholson in the seventeenth,
and removed (as a present to the Harcourt family)
towards the end of the eighteenth century : and is

LOCAL HABITATION 27

now a familiar object to picnickers in Nuneham
Park.

Anthony Wood preserves the memory of a great
many ancient Halls in various parts of the town —
the great majority of which had by 1700 been
displaced by College buildings, or renounced their
academic connexion and passed into the hands of
citizen owners or tenants. Ayliffe reckons seven
as belonging to the University. This class of
buildings, so charactistic of old Oxford and so
closely interwoven with early University history,
has left us a few survivals — for the most part
perierunt etiam mines. But Oxford of the reign
of Anne knew a good many of them still — such as
the still surviving Black Hall in St. Giles' and
Kettle Hall in Broad Street ; or Greek Hall, the
legendary habitation of Greek philosophers from
Grekelade (Cricklade) ; or Antiquity Hall, in Hythe
Bridge Street,, the favourite hostelry of that honest
Tory Hearne.

These have perished, and their place knows
them no more. Many of the old-fashioned houses
of the seventeenth century streets gave place
to the solid domestic architecture of the early
Georgians. There was a good deal of simple
clearance ; houses stood in many places since
opened out, — opposite Magdalen, for instance,
and in Cat Street, and on the site of the Martyrs'
Memorial — the latter group indeed survived the
century, as it is shown in a drawing of 1804.

2 8 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The picture of the High in 1765, preserved by

Skelton, shows already much of the foursquare

style of the period. It was an era of building.

Uffenbach, who hated Gothic, would have been

much better pleased with Oxford had he visited

it thirty years later ; the Clarendon Building was

erected in 17 13 by Vanbrugh, and the Radcliffe

Camera in 1737 by Gibbs. Colleges in especial

were full of plans for their regeneration according

to the received ideas of " elegance " : there was

"daily building" in them, Uffenbach says. Fifty

years later a writer in the Gentleman s Magazine

blames the inhabitants of Oxford for seeming "to

be more fond of multiplying useless masses of

stone than of adorning the face of nature."

"See, from each Ruin some new Pile doth rise,
And Modern Building now the Old outvies"

— SO sings a poet in 1738. All Souls', encouraged
by Codrington's donation of ;^i 0,000 (" which might
be better employed than on a palace for these idle
Socii, as they mostly are," Uffenbach writes in his
peevish way), built the famous library which the
enthusiastic historian of the College calls the finest
building of the Italian style. It was completed in
1756 ; and the whole of the College was Italianised
except the front on the High Street. This too
would have been similarly dealt with, had not the
architect himself, with a virtue not always found in
architects, strongly advised the governing body to
preserve "antient durable Public Buildings that are

LOCAL HABITATION 29

strong and usefull " (part of All Souls' had been, says
Hearne, designed as if to last for ever), " instead of
erecting new, fantasticall, perishable trash." O si sic
omnesl Queen's, Gothic and barbarous till 1710,
— Queen's Hall survived for many years, and is
preserved in Gough, with its fine Early English
doorway and Decorated window, — was then entirely
rebuilt in the Palladian manner — "a truly royal
structure" {recht konigliches Gedaiide), Uffenbach
calls it, satisfied for once : and Tickell, himself a
Queen's man, is equally enthusiastic about "the
pile now worthy great Philippa's name ! " Uffen-
bach is much pleased also with the Fellows'
Buildings of Corpus Christi, which belong to about
the same period. Later canons of taste may find
additional justification in the fact that Queen's, the
only Oxford College which has been completely
Palladianised, is also the only one which has seriously
suffered by fire in the last hundred and fifty years :
there was a great fire in 1778, which burnt out
the west wing abutting on the High Street : and
another in 1886 — originating in the Bursary, where,
it was alleged by wits of the period, the Bursar had
been cooking the accounts. The Peckwater quad-
rangle of Christ Church assumed its present form
about 1706. Magdalen offers perhaps the most
typical instance of the taste and the activity of
the eighteenth century : a plan was proposed and
in part executed whereby the "old and bad"
cloisters were to be demolished, and a large new

30 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

quadrangle constructed in the Classical style : the
New Buildings, begun in 1733, and standing where
Loggan puts a road bordered by cottages, repre-
sent the completed part of this work. Nothing
more was erected, either from the growing sense
that there was something to be said for "Gothic"
after all, or, more probably, from lack of funds.
Similarly, Worcester was to have been entirely
Classical in style ; but repentance or impecuniosity
saved the ancient buildings of Gloucester Hall.
Other Colleges, such as Merton and New College,
escaped the whips of the early Georgian era only
to smart from the scorpions of the Victorian.
Balliol has suffered severely from both periods.
Of the other foundations, Trinity (which had been
largely rebuilt at the close of the seventeenth
century), Oriel, St. John's, and Wadham have
most successfully escaped the improvements of
the last two hundred years. On the whole one
may say that the eighteenth century reconstructors
of Colleges destroyed much work that was beautiful,
and erected some that is ugly : but, saved as they
were from themselves by lack of necessary funds,
the result of their work was to produce variety of
styles : and variety is the characteristic charm of
much English architecture. Their most dangerous
period lasted for fifty years or so, when the passion
for Italianisation, which produced much good work,
was carried to excess. Towards the end of the
century a reaction gradually set in : the Palladian

LOCAL HABITATION 31

model was no longer the only one possible for a
man of taste ; and Peshall can go so far as to
call the old buildings of Magdalen "superb." Yet
even now much that we call picturesque was simply
unsightly. The writer of A Tour in the Midlands
(1774) speaks of private houses ** of timber plastered
over, their upper stories projecting forward, yet not
so ugly as in other towns I have seen."

Oxford is still to a certain extent a "garden
city," a town of many collegiate and domestic
garden nooks, even in the heart of its streets and
lanes : so that even in these days of modern im-
provement such a view as may be had from the
roof of the Radcliffe or Magdalen Tower shows a
most picturesque intermingling of grey and green.
At the beginning of the period which we are
describing, Uffenbach visited the Physic Garden,
with its "very ugly but very industrious" custodian
Jacob Bobart : whereof a Christ Church poet sings :

" Hortus ad Auroram Phoebeis fertilis herbis
Stat, Bobartanse cura laborque manus."

The laudatory Tickell celebrates trees and shrubs
cut into fantastic shapes as the principal beauty
of the Garden :

" How sweet the landskip ! where in living trees,
Here frowns a vegetable Hercules !
There fam'd Achilles learns to live again
And looks yet angry in the mimic scene :
Here artful birds, which blooming arbours show,
Seem to fly higher while they upward grow ! "

Magdalen Walks, "pleasant though not regular,"

32 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

as he calls them (that is, not laid out in formal
style, as contemporary art represents most College
gardens), were then as now a popular resort :
and became more popular than ever when the more
famous " Merton Walks " (a terrace 74 yards
long, made in Merton on the old town wall)
were closed to the general public, because of their
dangerous fascination for undergraduates and
" Toasts." But Uffenbach calls this much-praised
resort "low dark walks, which, as they have no
proper air, are not pleasant." The same observer
visited " Paradise Garden," in St. Ebbe's between
the Castle and Folly Bridge : a common resort of
Fellows who came there to drink. Paradise Square
preserves the name and site. The Parks, so
important a part of modern Oxford, assumed some-
thing of their present character about the middle
of the century. " I should speak," says the always
enthusiastic Peshall, "of a neat Terras Walk made
round Part of a large Field, called the Park, adjoining
to the North-East End of the City, extending about
a Mile, which serves for a pleasant and wholesome
Walk : whilst it opens to the Country, adorned with
Hills, noble Seats, Spires of Churches, etc., on look-
ing back on the City, there are viewed rich Domes,
Turrets, Spires, Towers, etc., of the Colleges,
Churches, etc., peeping over the Groves :

" Built nobly, pure the Air, and light the Soil,
ATHENS . . .
... in her sweet Recess,
City or Suburban, studious Walks and Shades."

LOCAL HABITATION 33

The eighteenth century gave Christ Church its
Broad Walk, — originally called, as we are told,
"White Walk": whence "Wide" and eventually
" Broad." St. Giles', still one of the most pictur-
esque streets in Oxford, is, according to Peshall, a
Rtis in Urbe, planted with trees, and with Parterres
of green before the houses* (Close by, between
St. Giles' and Walton Street, were the ruins of
Henry 11. 's palace of Beaumont, the destruction
of which is lamented by Skelton or his editor :
part of its remains is said to have been incorporated
into a large building — ''Woodroffe's Folly" — erected
by Dr. Benjamin Woodroffe at the beginning of
the eighteenth century, and intended by him to be
a College for the education of boys belonging to
the Greek Church. Much of the ground covered
by Beaumont Street, now a resort of the medical
profession, had been a cemetery.) Trees in the
streets, and even in College quadrangles, were a more
familiar sight than they are at present: in 1727
" they cut down," Hearne writes, **the fine pleasant
garden in Brasenose College quadrangle," which was
"a delightfull and pleasant Shade in Summer Time."
This was done "purely to turn it into a grass plot,
and to erect some silly statue there." There was
a planted enclosure before the Broad Street front
of Balliol during part at least of the century, as
now before St. John's : here the Fellows of Balliol
used to sit and wait for the arrival of the mail
coach, — having, as one gathers from the con-
3

34 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

temporary history of Balliol, very little else to do.
The trees have gone, and Fellows of Colleges have
no time to be mere flaneurs nowadays : and the
Oxford which they inhabit is undoubtedly less
picturesque : for whatever of beauty has been
added by the nineteenth century is balanced by
the ugly if necessary accretions of modern develop-
ment and progress. On a general comparison of
gain and loss, — setting the much good work done
by the Italianisers of the eighteenth century and
their striving after what should be at least substantial,
neat, and orderly, against their demolition of much
picturesque antiquity, — it is not rash to conclude
that even according to our canons of taste the
University town had never been more beautiful than
she was about 1800. Much old work had perished :
but enough remained to gain by the charm of
contrast.

As the general plan of streets, so approaches
to Oxford change but little. Travellers to
Eynsham and the west, crossing the Botley
Causeway aforementioned, followed a road which
passed over — not as at present to the south of —
Wytham hill : and the modern road which ascends
Cumnor hill on the way to Fyfield was not appar-
ently known to the early eighteenth century. The
main London road crossed the top of Shotover,
instead of skirting it to the north. By this route,
as the century proceeded, the Worcester Fly and
other "Flying Machines "of the period — by 1760

C/3 u

LOCAL HABITATION 35

there was a good deal of competition — accomplished
the journey from Oxford to London in a day, with
such speed and safety as the state of the road,
and the gentlemen thereof, permitted. Bursars of
Colleges, journeying with rent in their ample
pockets, had much need of the pistols and blunder-
busses which still adorn more than one common
room, — picturesque memorials of an age when
Colleges could still protect themselves against
robbery. One reads of travellers being robbed
quite close to the town — no farther off than "the
galloping ground above Botley," — on Wytham hill,
presumably. Public opinion was curiously lenient
in its comments on Dick Turpin and his fraternity :
per contra^ it hanged them when caught. Even
undergraduates suffered. Dr. Routh (born in 1756,
died in 1855) had seen the thing. "What, Sir,
do you tell me. Sir, that you never heard of
Gownsman's Gallows ? Why, I tell you, Sir, that
I have seen two undergraduates hanged on Gowns-
man's gallows in Holywell — hanged, Sir, for highway
robbery ! " The gallows stood at or near the east
end of Holywell Street.

Ill

TEACHING

EDUCATION, a term susceptible of a large
variety of interpretations, has always been
held to be one of the chief reasons of a University's
existence ; and eighteenth century Oxford is blamed,
— not indeed so much for its lack of such instruction
as our more enlightened age considers adequate,
whether as a mental discipline or a direct prepara-
tion for a business career, — but for failing to comply
even with the — to our minds — not very exacting
demands of its own contemporaries. And it is
quite possible that we may find that this indictment
is, broadly speaking, a true one ; but at the same
time, as in all matters concerning a period so
different in motive and method from our own, so
here it is necessary to put up "danger boards," to
save hasty generalisers from plunging into perilous
excesses of virtuous condemnation. Too many
critics are ready to put the worst construction on
all the acts of the eighteenth century simply because
it was not the seventeenth or the nineteenth. The

time has been given a bad name, and is consequently

TEACHING 37

hanged. One is occasionally reminded of the mental
attitude of the boy who threw a stone at a toad
with the expressed intention of "larning it to be
a toad." This is hardly the method proper to the
candid historian.

Perhaps we are too recent and therefore too
ardent converts to a policy of ubiquitous supervision
and continual instruction (which may or may not
be beneficial : learning is not always advanced
when the Don turns pedagogue) to be able to judge
fairly of our predecessors. But even contempor-
aneous condemnations of educational systems are
not necessarily and finally damning. In Eng-
land, at least, the instruction of youth is every
one's butt : and while the medical profession has
been congratulated on the fact that its successes
walk abroad, but the earth conceals its failures, —
places of education enjoy no such advertisement.
They are known by their failures. In regard of
their relation to their alumni, Cicero's word is only
too true, " cui placet obliviscitur, cui dolet meminit " :
a good education is forgotten, a bad one rankles.
Were the world just, schools and Universities
would get credit for the successes of their pupils
in after-life, as they are now blamed for their
subsequent failures. But men are supposed to fail
in consequence, and to succeed in spite of education.
It has then to be remembered that even improved
educational manners and customs have in the last
thirty years heard but little of praise and much of

38 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

condemnation. The public will still be cavilling.
Nevertheless it must be allowed that the modern
satirist has changed his object ; charges of sloth
are no longer his permanent stock-in-trade ; Uni-
versities are blamed less for idleness than for
misplaced and perverse activity. It is not that the
Fellow of these days does not teach : the gravamen
is that he teaches the wrong things, and wears
himself out for frivolous ends, such as compulsory
examinations in Greek.

The non-academic world, not interesting itself

in the rather obscure relation between Colleges

and the University, seldom takes the trouble to

define its ideas as to different kinds of academic

education. It rests for the most part content with

a vague and incurious belief that University teaching

is represented by the Professoriate ; and if Professors

do not teach, then there can be no University

teaching, and therefore obviously no teaching in

the University. This view ignores the College

tutor : and although it is true that Colleges in

general, as distinct from the University, have

had their moments of educational inefficiency, it

is by no means safe to assume that at any period

within the last two centuries Oxford has been

untaught because her Professors were silent or

unheard. It is within the experience of our own

enlightened age, purified by two Commissions and

the threat of a third, that Professors have been as

voices crying in the wilderness — testifying to empty

TEACHING 39

benches or, more frequently, to audiences practi-
cally non-academic, — in any case, really non-existent
so far as undergraduates are concerned : yet the
education of youth has somehow been carried on.
If the early Georgian Professor was compelled to
lecture by no Visitatorial Board, and hardly even by
any public opinion, we are not on the evidence before
us entitled to conclude as to general and all-pervad-
ing educational inactivity. If there were not Pro-
fessors, there may at least have been College tutors.
Let it, moreover, be granted that both the
teachers and the learners of the eighteenth century
were fewer than they should have been : yet still that
there were a few (for that there was an active
minority will hardly be disputed) : it is within the
province of an advocatus diaboli to plead that these
few may claim credit for a disinterested zeal which
we are not entitled to boast. The study of Greek
could seldom be recommended to young men as
the highroad to situations of emolument. It must
have been pursued as an end in itself; and no
doubt it would be a mere libel to allege that many
moderns have not so pursued it ; still, since honour
examinations and open competition for Fellowships
have cleared the way for ambitious merit, our own
happier age must lie under the suspicion of mixing
its motives : pure enthusiasm for the higher scholar-
ship may be tinged with the mere carnal desire to
succeed. The eighteenth century had but little
adventitious stimulus to learning. It was a period

40 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

of conventions : Oxford gave her degrees really
for residence, on the basis of the plausible and
pleasing convention that Universities being places
of study are inhabited by students, and that residence
implied the habit of serious study. No doubt this
attractive theory was at variance with the obvious
facts of life ; still those who entertained it may at
least have the credit of maintaining a theory which
is nothing if not respectable : and the few who did
actually try to verify it must be the more laudable
for the lack of incentive. In the absence of honour
examinations and even of pass examinations other
than merely farcical, they did nevertheless teach and
learn.

It is true that opinions differ as to the stimulating
effect of examinations. Eminent authorities have
held that even the average man is more likely to
learn when he is least harassed by any form of
compulsory test : compulsion in any form (as they
say) actually stunts the learner's zeal and corrupts
his virtue : take away the extraneous pressure, and
you are the more likely to allow free play to the
generous instincts of the average undergraduate,
who, as Adam Smith maintains, will always go
eagerly to any teacher provided the teaching be
good. Yet Adam Smith had been at Balliol, in
the days when that great College had not yet begun
to be a centre of sweetness and light. Is the
categorical imperative of the Moral Law a sufficient
inducement to study.-* If it was so in the later

TEACHING 41

years of the eighteenth century, then it is to be
feared that we are worse than our forefathers. In
a similar spirit, an even more respectable authority,
the Rev. Mark Pattison, declares his conviction
that compulsory examinations produce "paralysis
of intellectual action." They even encourage a
man to be no more than "the foppish exquisite of
the drawing-room or the barbarised athlete of the
arena." One may question the conclusions of these
eminent men. There were " loungers " and idlers
among undergraduates before the institution of
real examinations, honour or pass ; and in all proba-
bility this number would have been diminished by
the presence of some obvious and intelligible
incentive to reading.

The influence of examinations can hardly be
overrated by any one who would estimate justly
the relative criminality of average tutors and pupils
in the nineteenth and in the preceding century. It
is from our honour schools (which, let it be observed,
we owe to the years immediately preceding 1800,
the year of the passing of the New Examination
Statute) that Oxford has derived most of her
modern activity in the field of learning as well as
education. They have been the battleground of
intercollegiate competition — a thing which has been
regretted by superior persons, but nevertheless is
the true parent of much research as of much " pot-
hunting " : and out of them — or out of the closer
connexion in which honour examinations have

42 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

linked the Universities with the external public —
has grown that incessant and no doubt salutary
vigilance with which the public has watched the
ways of Oxford and Cambridge (especially Oxford)
during the past half-century. That fierce light
of public opinion never beat upon eighteenth
century Oxford.

Men of learning are too often reluctant to com-
municate their erudition to the world in the form of
oral teaching ; nor is this to be attributed in most
cases to mere indolence. The hearing of lectures
has been condemned by students as an interruption
to reading : their delivery is more truly an inter-
ruption to research. To address an audience
severely limited by the nature of the subject may be
in itself depressing : and if you are engaged upon
a magnum opus, to give a foretaste and as it were
a private view of its contents may be even imprudent.
Nor has it been maintained always, everywhere, and
by all that a Professor's first duty is teaching :
eminent authority is prepared to condone his silence.
Mark Pattison, asserting that " the reputation of
Berlin rests not upon any education given to its
2000 students, but upon the scientific industry of
its Professors," quotes the learned and industrious
Professor Ritschl to the effect that " a professor's
life would be a very pleasant one if it were not for
the lecturing " : and concludes that " the professor
of a modern University ought to regard himself as
primarily a learner, and a teacher only secondarily."

TEACHING 43

Could the Oxford Professors of our rude forefathers'
days show a literary output of permanent value,
abstention from mere lecturing might be pardoned
to them ; but it appears only too probable that the
learned men must look elsewhere for their defence.
However it be, Mr. Wordsworth's statement
that shortly before the year 1800, not more than
one in three of the Oxford Professors gave lectures,
would perhaps be even too optimistic in reference
to the Oxford of a century earlier. There
appears to be every reason to believe that
the Professoriate in general, with very few excep-
tions, had ceased to lecture long before 1700.
According to Sir W. Hamilton (who, it should be
remembered, writes with a strong and possibly
justifiable animus against the tutorial system of his
own day), professorial teaching had been deliberately
extinguished by tutorial jealousy ; the Professors'
courses of lectures were put down by the Heads of
Colleges from mere motives of self-interest, in order
to give the monopoly of instruction to the Fellow-
tutor. Pattison's account of the matter is perhaps
the more probable. He traces the silence of
Professors to the want of audiences fitted to hear
them. During the Stuart reigns and the Civil
Wars the place of ideas had been taken by
"the narrow interests of ephemeral party." "The
best education which the University could give at
that date did not go beyond that which is now
suggested to the passmen. It did not go beyond

44 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

the languages, — or rather the Latin language, for
Greek was rare, — the technical part of logic, the
rudiments of geometry." Education had adapted
itself to the capacities of its recipients. This
lowering of the intellectual level was effected by
sovereign authority, which used its power over both
Church and Universities for political ends. It was
the Government, and not the University itself, which
had closed the gates of Oxford to Nonconformists,
crushing academic freedom ; and "the twenty-three
years of Leicester's Chancellorship (i 565-1 588)
left Oxford pretty much what it remained up to
the nineteenth century, without independence, with-
out the dignity of knowledge, without intellectual
ambition, the mere tool of a political party." So if
"long before the Laudian Statutes of 1636 the
Professors had ceased to have a class because there
were no longer any students sufficiently advanced
to attend them," it was the spacious times of great
Elizabeth that we have to blame after all.

When we come to the actual practice of
eighteenth century Professors, an arid enumeration
of particulars is the safer course : for much in-
justice may be done to individual merit by hasty
generalisation. Attack and incrimination is frequent
enough, both within and without the University :
calm and reasoned statements are not quite so
common ; and perhaps one is most likely to arrive
at something resembling truth by reading between
the lines of apologies for the existing system. In

TEACHING 45

the very earliest years of the period, documents
reprinted by the Oxford Historical Society throw
some light on academic teaching. A certain Mr.
Maidwell had proposed a scheme for the foundation
of a public Academy, to be supported by the nation,
where the curriculum should be somewhat more
popular and " useful " than that prescribed at the
Universities : the subjects for instruction were to be
" Grsec, Latin, French, history, chronology, astro-
nomy, geometry, navigation, arithmetic, merchants'
accounts," besides "dancing, fencing, and riding
the great horse " : in fact, a sound commercial
education (according to the ideas of the time), with
"extras." Such a scheme could not but arouse
hostility in the Universities, as tending to diminish
their clientele \ and it is criticised at length by
the venerable Dr. Wallis, Savilian Professor and
Keeper of the Archives: "a Man," says Hearne,
"of most admirable fine Parts and great Industry,
whereby in some years he became so noted for his
profound Skill in Mathematics, to which he was
naturally inclined, that he was deservedly accounted
the greatest Person in that Profession of any of
his time. He was withall a Good Divine, and no
mean Critik in ye Greek and Latin Tongues " : in
the mouth of that ultra-Tory Hearne, really extra-
ordinary praise of a man who had stood so high
in favour with the Puritans as Wallis. From
the latter's remarks we should gather that the
Professoriate of 1700 was not abnormally active.

46 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Apparently the immediate charge against Professors
was that they did not impart " informal instruction "
— did not form what we now call a "seminar." " I
can give you," says Wallis, " many instances of a
like nature with what they call privata collegia (or
private companies, by voluntary agreement and
consociation, for particular parts of usefuU know-
ledge in our universities : ) and that there is no
cause to complain for want of such." He then
proceeds to show that instruction in chemistry,
anatomy, botany, mathematics, and astronomy can
be and is obtained from Professors and other duly-
qualified persons; "and I do not," he says, "know
any part of usefuU knowledge proper for scholars
to learn : but that if any number of persons
(gentlemen or others) desire therein to be informed,
they may find those in the university who will be
ready to instruct them : so that if there be any
defect therein it is for want of learners, not of
teachers." This principle, as demanding the initi-
ative from the would-be pupil, is not one which
would find favour with most moderns ; but in 1700
it was apparently held sufficient that University
teaching should be procurable — if you could collect
a quorum of serious students among your friends,
and then had the boldness to approach a Professor
who perhaps had already "made other arrange-
ments." As to public Professorial lectures. Dr.
Wallis speaks very vaguely ; and of the majority
of the Professorial body he makes no mention at

TEACHING 47

all. It is true that his immediate business was to
establish the capacity of Oxford to give instruction,
if required. But after this it is not entirely sur-
prising that a correspondent of Terrce Filius should
state (in 1720) that no one had lectured publicly
in any Faculty, except in poetry and music, for
three years past. " Every Thursday morning in
term time," this writer continues, "there ought to
be a divinity lecture in the divinity school : two
gentlemen of our house went one day to hear what
the learned professor had to say upon that subject :
these two were joined by another master of arts,
who without arrogance might think they under-
stood divinity enough to be his auditors : and that
consequently his lecture would not have been lost
upon them : but the Doctor thought otherwise,
who came at last, and was very much surprised to
find that there was an audience. He took two
or three turns about the school, and then said,
Magistri, vos non estis idonei auditores : prceterea,
juxta legis doctorem Boucher, tres non faciunt
collegium — valete : and so went away" — on the
plea that three do not make a quorum. Such
scenes, according to Terrce Filius, are enacted in

" the Public Schools
Where now a deathlike stillness rules."

Gibbon's strictures on Magdalen College and
the University have become, of course, part of the
stock-in-trade of every critic of Oxford : such are
the privileges of fame. Whatever we are to think

48 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

of the value of youthful impressions (Gibbon matric-
ulated at Magdalen in his fifteenth year), these
have nothing to do with the Professors of 1752,
with whom the historian did not apparently come
into contact. His indictment of public teaching
applies to the Professoriate of a later day, and is
founded on Adam Smith's assertion that the greater
part of the public Professors have, for these many
years, given up altogether even the pretence of
teaching. The assertion is an exaggeration, appar-
ently : nevertheless, Mr. Hurdis' Vindication of
Magdalen College seems to acquit Adam Smith of
a wholly gratuitous libel. The Vindicator does
not make out a very brilliant case for the Professors.
He enumerates fifteen of the existing twenty, and
shows that the Regius Professor of Hebrew, the
Praelector in Anatomy, the Vinerian Professor,
and the Praelector in Chemistry do actually read
on certain days of every week. The remaining
eleven either lecture (but, with an economy of
erudition, only once a term) — or perform their
functions vicariously — or intend to lecture — or have
read lectures, but desisted for want of an audience.
Thus are fifteen out of twenty "clearly exculpated
from Mr. Gibbon's charge." " The remaining
five," says Mr. Hurdis, with apparently uncon-
scious humour, "may possibly read their lectures
as punctually." It is not a very convincing
record of industry. The Vindication was published
about 1800, a very dark period in the history of

TEACHING 49

University, as distinct from College, instruction : a
few years before this, — about 1790, — professorial
teaching would seem to have touched its nadir.
This is the period when Oxford takes so sternly
practical a view of the duties incumbent on a
Professor of Moral Philosophy that his chair is held
ex officio by one of the Proctors, the very nature of
whose office, it is maintained, must lead them to
a most satisfactory discharge of the real duties of a
Professor of Moral Philosophy. This remarkable
identification of the contemplative and practical
lives is quoted not by an assailant, but by a
champion of Oxonian manners. Things, in fact,
were much worse in 1790 than they had been half
a century earlier. But in that same year the
Professor of Modern History salves his conscience
by employing (time-honoured resource !) a deputy,
who is not puffed up with pride like modern
deputies. On the contrary, he will " wait on
gentlemen in their own apartments " — like a barber.
Of course, among the many distinguished men
who occupied professorial chairs, there were honour-
able exceptions to this prevailing reticence. Black-
stone, as the first Vinerian Professor, is said to have
delivered excellent lectures : Lowth's lectures on
Isaiah — delivered, a thing surprising to an age of
specialism, when he was Professor of Poetry — mark
an epoch in sacred scholarship. It is among the
jurists and Orientalists and theologians that we
have to look for the best work done by eighteenth
4

50 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

century Oxonians : in these spheres Cambridge
confesses her inferiority to a University which can
boast the names of Blackstone, Home, Jones,
Hody, Kennicott, and Routh (though Routh's work
indeed belongs mainly to the nineteenth century).
But it was a period of professorial apathy, on the
whole, and outside these spheres few branches of
learning really flourished. Resident Oxonians, ac-
quiescing in the undisputed greatness^ of Aristotle,
left little mark on the history of philosophy.
Classical scholars of real learning were sadly to
seek. Many wrote Latin with facility and elegance
— that characteristic of the age : but for the Porsons
and Bentleys of Cambridge, Oxford, if her authors
are confessed to be numerous indeed, can only
produce a number of minor men, names and shadows
of names. It would be strange if the temper of the
time and its incuriousness of learning were not
reflected in the state of University institutions.
These were shows, places for sightseers rather than
students. Uffenbach visited the Bodleian when at
Oxford in 1710; later, he writes to a friend: "I
cannot sufficiently deplore the horrible fate " (sors
nefanda) "of this renowned library. Hardly any-
body wishes to use or enjoy this vast storehouse."
According to the same writer, Hudson, the librarian
of his time, was a man of "stupendous ignorance."
" The little life that appears in the library," Dr.
Macray writes, " seems to be chiefly devoted to
English antiquities, a worthy subject indeed, but

TEACHING 5 1

hardly co-extensive with the work of a University
or the objects of the Hbrary." In Hearne's later
days " hardly any learning is sought after but
English, Scotch, and Irish history." Neglect
of the "fontes"of learning is perhaps a heavier
indictment than the slackness of Professors :
whom, indeed, it is hard to blame for not teaching.
They were to a great extent victims of circum-
stance. Under existing conditions it was often
difficult to find an audience. The Statutes
did not compel them to teach, nor was public
opinion exacting. National events, which had
identified Oxford with a political party and turned
the University town into a battlefield, first of arms
and then of controversy, had effectively diverted
men's thoughts from learning and education, and
the old channels were not easily or quickly regained.
It does not need the influence of an exceptionally
prosaic epoch to distract the mind of an exceptionally
practical nation : erudition, at Oxford at least, is
constantly endangered by party politics. Such
considerations, if they do not excuse, may at least
help to explain.

The real gravamen against Professors is that
they were slow to produce, not that they were
indolent in teaching. In fact, there was hardly
any one for them to teach : a deficiency which was
due less to the deliberate malignity and avarice of
jealous College tutors than to the changed conditions
of Oxford life. It must not be forgotten that the

52 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

University of early days — the University as we see
it during the two centuries following the first founda-
tion of Colleges — was not only what we understand
by a University, but also a kind of public school :
and its course, from matriculation to the M.A.
degree, covered what we call secondary education.
Undergraduates were for the most part young boys
in their early teens : for the graduate and the
graduate alone — who was supposed to attain his
Master's degree not as now, by mere passage of
time, but by continued residence and a definite course
of study, and who, if he contemplated entering a
learned profession, might qualify himself by a further
prolonged study and residence — can Professorial
teaching have been intended. The subsequent
silence of teachers is largely to be accounted for by
the fact that prolongation of residence after the
Bachelor's degree had for the great majority fallen
into desuetude before the Laudian reforms. The
half-grown boys, who at the close of the seven-
teenth century formed the greater part of the alumni
of the University, were the natural prey not of the
Professor but of the College tutor : they required
"tutors and governors," and were only very rarely
alive to the attractions of extraneous erudition :
for the average man, College guardianship and
College tuition is always the essential. It is true
that — from whatever causes : probably in conse-
quence of the foundation and growth of schools
throughout the country — the average age of matric-

TEACHING 53

ulation had risen : a fact which would itself go far
to explain the above-mentioned curtailment of the
period of academic residence. Something like the
modern system had already begun by 1700. The
undergraduate is not quite the schoolboy contem-
plated by some early College statutes. His average
age may, I suppose, be taken as perhaps sixteen to
twenty. Some freshmen, indeed, were younger.
Gibbon matriculated at fourteen in the middle of
the century: Jeremy Bentham in 1760 at twelve:
but he was abnormally precocious. Even in 1806,
Keble was admitted scholar of Corpus Christi
College at fourteen and a half. However, " it
would seem," says Mr. Wordsworth, " that students
were admitted, on the whole, at a later age than they
had been in earlier times ; " yet matriculations at
fifteen are fairly frequent, and not unknown at an
earlier age. We find Oxford in the eighteenth
century halting between two states of things. An
old system was moribund : and Alma Mater, never
exceptionally nimble in adapting herself to changed
conditions, had not yet framed the machinery of a
new one.

The relation 01 tutor and pupil is as old as the
College system. From the foundation of Merton,
the elder students acted as tutors to the younger.
At Queen's, the younger boys were to study
grammar under a grammar master, and the elder
boys logic or philosophy under a teacher belonging
to the Faculty of Arts : and " at the beginning of

54 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

every meal," writes Sir H. Maxwell Lyte, "the
Fellows were to ' oppose ' or examine the poor
boys" ("poor" is used in a financial sense) "so
as to ascertain whether they were making good
progress in their studies." This is the tutorial
system with a vengeance ! According to the early
constitution of New College, "five of the Senior
Fellows, styled the Deans, exercised a general
supervision over the studies of the rest, while others
acted as tutors to those who were of less than three
years' standing in philosophy or in law, receiving
for their labour a certain yearly stipend." Mr.
Davis, the historian of Balliol, writes of Bishop
Fox, the reformer of that College in 1507: "His
constitutional reforms, startling as they appear,
were carefully adapted to pre-existent circumstances.
There were already nine or ten members of the
House who claimed a certain precedence of the
rest, either on account of superior standing in the
University or because of their official position within
the House. He decreed that for the future there
should always be ten such persons, all of them
Bachelors, Masters, or Doctors, who were to be
distinguished from the other inmates of the House
by the title of Fellows, and in whose hands the
whole of the government was to be vested. To
each of them some definite duty was assigned : and
all alike were to have a share in the tuition of the
juniors." In view of such statements Mr, Words-
worth is surely rather too sweeping when he says

TEACHING 5 5

that ** in the early days of the Universities the
tutorial system was unknown": and that "Laud
may be regarded as the author of the system of
College tuition " : though the Laudian reforms
certainly stereotyped existing conditions by insist-
ing on the necessity of allotting pupils to tutors.
It would be difficult to generalise as to tutorial
stipends. Dr. Richard Newton, Principal of Hart
Hall, complains in 1726 that one of his students is
lured away to Balliol, where he can get a tutor for
nothing : whereas in Hart Hall the youth must pay
his tutor as much as thirty shillings a quarter.
This, says the Principal, is not a very extravagant
demand, "unless learning be the very lowest of all
attainments, and the Education of Youth the very
worst of all professions." Moreover, "it hath ever
been the Practice of Tutors to receive a considera-
tion for their Care : " this considerationbeing different
in different Colleges, and sometimes even between
tutors of the same College. The collegiate system
was supplemented by private tuition, the private
tutor even living sometimes within the College walls.
Thus Hearne says that Mr. Atherton of Brasenose,
having a College tutor, was also under the care of a
nonjuring clergyman, who resided in the College.

The "juniors" whom the Fellows of antiquity
were supposed to educate were for the most
part, as has been said, young boys : and the
Fellows who taught them acted as schoolmasters.
But the collective body of eighteenth century

56 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

undergraduates, while it contained few qualified to
be serious students, included a good many quite
old enough to be the prototypes of the moderns,
"called emphatically Men." They were unfitted
for school discipline. The categorical imperative,
which had often been quite sufBcient to awake
the mental energies of a schoolboy, was not an
adequate stimulus to learning among the various
delights and liberties of adolescence : unless study
was to be a purely perfunctory affair, some further
incentive was required. Colleges had not yet
seriously undertaken the problem of providing this.
It remained for later years to discover a disciplinary
modus vivendi which should serve (though not
without friction) for the government of half-
emancipated hobbledehoys, and an educational
compromise which should endeavour (it is true,
with only partial success) to satisfy alike the serious
student and the average man.

It would be, of course, a mistake to suppose
that the eighteenth century found Oxford without
a properly prescribed and regulated curriculum
for her students. There is a regular course of
study, intended to cover the seven years from
matriculation to the M.A. degree, ordained by the
Laudian Statutes : a course which, had it been
duly followed, was catholic enough to satisfy the
demands of that or indeed of any age. It is no
system for the specialist : Oxonians are required to
take all knowledge for their province. In the first

TEACHING 57

year of residence there are to be lectures on
Grammar and Rhetoric. The second is devoted
to the study of Aristotle's Ethics and Politics,
Logic and Economics : the third and fourth to
Logic, Moral Philosophy, Geometry, and Greek :
and the three, or nearly three, years intervening
between the Bachelor's and Master's degrees are
to be given to Geometry, Astronomy, Metaphysics,
Natural Philosophy, Ancient History, Greek, and
Hebrew. This is comprehensive enough (and
has the admirable merit of prescribing a definite
course of reading for the Master's degree — surely
a desideratum in our own enlightened age). Seven
years so spent give a general education, — to provide
which is the proper business of Universities, — which
equips the learner at all points to face the world :
while the would-be divine or lawyer or physician
is required to devote several additional years to the
pursuit of knowledge in his own special Faculty.
But theory, unfortunately, was not supplemented by
practice : circumstance — whether the youth of the
undergraduate, or the troublous period of the Civil
War, or the general slackness which followed the
Restoration, is to be held responsible : probably all
three causes combined — had rendered the Laudian
regulations in reality obsolete. In fact, such
comprehensive attempts (however meritorious) to
legislate ab extra for academic studies rarely, in
England, at least, attain their object. As the
University examinations, which alone could sanction

58 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

and stereotype a prescribed curriculum, were either
non-existent or farcical, Colleges — always powerful
to resist external interference — followed their own
educational inclinations : and while at the worst
they left the undergraduate practically untaught,
at the best they subjected him to a system which
was far in the letter and farther in the spirit from
the ordinances of Laud. Hurdis, the ** Vindicator "
of Magdalen College, writing about the close of the
century, describes in detail the official programme
of a Magdalen undergraduate's reading during four
years of residence. Apparently what the College
at that time prescribed did not go beyond "the
grand old fortifying classical curriculum," supple-
mented, of course, by divinity : the list of books
which men were required to read and offer for
terminal examination is not remarkably varied,
nor does it suggest an effort to progress with the
developing intelligence : freshmen read Virgil in
their first year, and senior men were still " making
themselves proficient" in the Georgics at the end
of sixteen terms : the curriculum, in short, is a
narrow and unreasonable one even for schoolboys,
for whom alone it is in any way adapted. Further,
there were necessary " declamations " : " all young
men of three years' standing, whether gentlemen-
commoners or dependent members, who belong to
Magdalen College, are still called upon to discharge
this useful exercise, before the whole College,
immediately after dinner, while the society and

TEACHING 59

their visitants are yet sitting at their respective
tables " : a custom of which the value lies in the
method of its application. Moreover, the student
"has to attend, besides, his Tutor's lecture once
a day, and must produce a theme or declamation
once a week to the Dean " — an official the nature
of whose functions suggests the possibility of a
disciplinary rather than a purely educational motive
for the theme or declamation. These regulations,
Hurdis admits, had not ("may not have" is his
optimistic phrase) been in force for more than
thirty years before the time of writing : and how
far the Magdalen of Gibbon's own undergraduate
days was a place of study, we really can form very
little idea. The College gave special payments in
the early part of the century to Hebrew teachers :
and in 1741 we hear of a payment to a teacher
of French, " Magister Fabre, praelector linguae
Gallicanse." According to the historian himself
(if the impressions of a boy of fifteen be worth con-
sideration), the Magdalen tutors were easy-going
men, some of them not without erudition, but
seldom energetic in the instruction of youth :
perhaps, had Gibbon been a little older and not a
gentleman-commoner (belonging, that is, to a class
whose interests have seldom been intellectual), the
College authorities might have taken him more
seriously. He admits that there were tutors of that
day who taught, such as John Burton of C.C.C.,
and William Scott (afterwards Lord Stowell) of

6o OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

University. Jeremy Bentham, coming up to
Queen's at the age of twelve with a fully developed
critical faculty, has little good to say of his tutor.
Without laying too much stress on the impression
of extreme youth, one may infer that, if it is prob-
ably an exaggeration to say with Bentham that
most tutors and professors were profligate or morose
or insipid, most Colleges considered as strictly
educational institutions were passing through their
darkest hour about 1750 or thereabouts. "My
tutor," writes the first Lord Malmesbury, who
matriculated at Merton in 1763, "according to the
practice of all tutors at that moment, gave himself
no concern about his pupils."

In the early days of the century some attempts
seem to have been made to stimulate the energy
of tutors and lecturers ; even Balliol, during most
of the period rather a warning than a guide, enjoyed
a brief period of ten years (17 13-1723) during
which its tuition deviated into comparative efficiency.
"At Hertford, Dr. Newton," writes the historian
of that College, " was determined that the exercises
performed in his College, while following the course
of those prescribed by the University, should be a
reality," there were to be frequent and genuine
disputations for undergraduates, and the Principal
himself and his Fellows were to lecture constantly
and regularly. In short, "it is clear Hertford
College undergraduates were kept pretty well at
work " under the rule of Dr. Newton, — whose prim

RICHARD NEWTON

FROM AN ENGRAVING AFl'EK THE I'AINTING IN HERTFORD COLLEGE

TEACHING 6 1

and formal portrait stamps him for a man of rules
and regulations. If it is true of the century in
general that (in the words of the historians of New
College) " little was taught to the ordinary under-
graduate except some formal logic, and as much
classical scholarship as was necessary for the making
of Latin verses," — if the "frivolous lectures and
unintelligible disputations " which Butler endured
at Oriel were the educational stock-in-trade of
most foundations — yet attempts were made from
time to time to improve the machinery, if not to
enlarge the scope, of tuition ; and these attempts
were made rather at the beginning and the end
than in the middle of the period. They followed
naturally from the disciplinary regulations which
marked the first two decades of the century ; and
as naturally from the intellectual awakening of its
closing years. Generalisation is difficult and un-
safe, as the ways of Colleges probably differed more
than they do at present, when genuine University
examinations have of necessity imposed uniformity
of method : but the indications point to some such
conclusion. The last half of the century is spoken
of as a " golden period " at the University. About
1700 Christ Church, under the rule of Aldrich, was a
place of high ideals. The Phalaris controversy, in
fact, arose out of the Dean's habit of " encouraging
learning among the younger members of Christ
Church by assigning to one or other of them the
task of editing some classical work," in accordance

62 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

with which Mr. Boyle was commissioned to edit
the celebrated letters. (These tasks appear to
have been occasionally imposed as a kind of penance
for offences against collegiate discipline — in one
instance for the grave error of falling in love.)
Ten years later, Atterbury as Dean "is said to
have been zealous in promoting the studies of
undergraduates " : and during the first half of the
century, at least, Christ Church men appear to have
done something at least for the humaner letters by
prefixing copies of " light verse " (in Latin, of
course) to the serious and arid disputations which
newly-made B.A.'s were bound to deliver in the
schools — jam, as it were, to make the academic
powder palatable. At Lincoln, from 1730 to 1740,
learning flourished, and the College chronicler
speaks of a "golden age" : while at the other side
of Brasenose Lane, Conybeare, one of the most
active heads of the age, was reforming the tutorial
system of Exeter, — none too soon, — and even
venturing on the Utopian reform of an equalisa-
tion of work and wages. From Exeter, Conybeare
was translated to the Deanery of Christ Church,
" to cleanse," it was said, " that Augean stable " :
possibly the morals of the House needed purification :
intellectually there is no doubt that it may pass for
the show College of the century. Nicholas Amherst,
who has a hard word for most of his contemporaries,
has no graver charge against Christ Church men
in 1733 than that of undue pride — whether based

TEACHING 63

on superiority of birth or of intellect. " Its tutors,"
the satirist admits, ** are intelligent." Towards
the close of the century Gibbon records that "a
course of classical and philosophical studies is pro-
posed, and even pursued, in that numerous seminary :
learning has been made a duty, a pleasure, and even
a fashion : and several young gentlemen do honour
to the College in which they have been educated "
under the auspices of Bagot and Cyril Jackson,
the friend of Peel. Christ Church men were noted
in these years for their attainments in "pure"
scholarship ; and already in 1 760, or thereabouts,
the Oxford Magazine of that day speaks of " Christ
Church pedants."

In common justice to an unpopular period, it is
only fair to add to Gibbon's mature judgment Dr.
Johnson's opinion of College tuition as he saw it
in his later visits to Oxford. " There is here, Sir"
(in 1798), "such a progressive emulation. The
students are anxious to appear well to their tutors :
the tutors are anxious to have their pupils appear
well in the College : the Colleges are anxious to
have their students appear well in the University :
and there are excellent rules of discipline in every
College." Perhaps something has to be allowed
for the fact that Oxford stood, in its way, for
principles which the Doctor considered essential to
the salvation of society. Still, the dictum is at the
service of optimistic historians.

Johnson's own College, which he called a nest

64 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

of singing birds, and which directed the studies at
the same time of the lexicographer and George
Whitefield, must have taxed the versatihty of its
tutors. Johnson himself does not praise Dr.
Jorden's intellectual ability, but allows him the
higher credit of treating his pupils as if they were
his sons. Similarly, Whitefield's tutor was "like
a father " to him, under circumstances which may
have been trying to the academic disciplinarians
of that age. As for Shenstone and Graves and
the other singing birds, their literary coteries and
their interest in the remoter and less-known classics
must have lain outside the groove of College
teaching, and been rather tolerated than encouraged
by authority.

Much light is thrown on these matters and on
the relation of collegiate tuition to the steady
reading-man (whom it is a comfort to find existing
among the conventional voluptuaries who crowd
the pages of the satirist) by the ample correspond-
ence of John James of Queen's College, the virtuous
and diligent son of a north-country clergyman.
James was an undergraduate of Queen's from 1778 to
1 781, a period which he represents as a dark age in
the annals of that institution ; other records of its
studies make it probable that the young man was k
little hypercritical. Rightly or wrongly, from the
first he was very ill-satisfied with such efforts as the
College made for his instruction : in fact, the expres-
sions used by himself and his correspondents are

TEACHING 65

such as hardly bear repetition in modern days when
all tutors are virtuous. He had no taste for logic,
— "a kind of freemasonry — mysterious, dark, and
apparently impenetrable," — but being a docile if
somewhat priggish youth (and one who with the
stimulus of emulation " finds no study irksome and
no exercise tedious") he grapples with LogiccB
Artis Compendmm, and has "had the honour of
proving to the Doctor's satisfaction that it must be
either night or day." Queen's had at this time, we
are told, considerable reputation for its logic. In the
library (says "Shepilinda" in her curious "Memoir")
"all the books except the Treatises concerning
logick are grown a small matter mouldy." James
declaimed in Hall, according to the custom then
esteemed salutary, and attended the declamations
of others. " They clapt a declamation on me three
days after I got to College " — this was after three
years' residence — "and Mr. Dowson . . . summons
me to hall at twelve o'clock, to hear for half an hour
or more bad Latin, bad arguments, and bad
philosophy." James' real interests lay elsewhere ;
he was what is now sometimes called a "mere
scholar " : indeed the best intellect of his contempor-
aries was directed towards linguistic and literary
studies, for which College teaching generally did
little more than to lay a meagre foundation ; and
even a comparatively advanced Hellenist like James
writes Greek without accents. He regarded College
exercises and lectures as interruptions to serious
5

66 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

reading, perhaps not unjustifiably. Later, we find
him studying chemistry, a subject which " promises
to afford a firm and elegant basis for a compleat
skill in Natural Philosophy, . . . and certainly will
enable any divine in Europe to describe with con-
fidence the operation by which Moses might have
reduced the golden calf to powder, — to the confusion
of Voltaire and all his disciples." This is not the
temper of the narrow specialist, pursuing chemistry
as an end in itself. Whether or not (as is suggested
by Dr. Wall, the lecturer, a scholar and one who can
diversify his compilations with elegant learning)
chemistry was "an immediate revelation from
Heaven to Adam, and had its name from Cham,
the progenitor of the Egyptians," at any rate by
1 78 1 it had become an instrument for enlarging the
mind and softening the manners, — a subject that no
truly liberal education could afford to ignore. James'
studies are perhaps characteristic of the better sort of
contemporary Oxonian. Those who took the Uni-
versity seriously regarded it as a place of general
education, — general preparation for the battle of life,
— not as a school for specialists : nor has it yet been
proved that they were wholly wrong. To James,
chemistry was like the French and music which
occupied a good deal of his residence — an elegant
and desirable accomplishment. Of course there was
always the danger lest this catholicity of interest
might degenerate, as it often did, into the merest
dilettantism — the habit of mind of George Eliot's Mr.

TEACHING 67

Brooke, who went in for science a great deal himself
at one time, but saw it would not do, because it led
to everything, and pulled up in time. That memor-
able man would have been more at home in the
eighteenth than in the nineteenth century.

On the whole one is driven to the conclusion
that during most of the century and at most Colleges
comparatively little help was given to the learner :
and if Lincoln and Uniyersity could boast a
"golden" period, it was probably the gold of
mediocrity. There were some good tutors ; and
their uncompelled virtue deserves the greater praise
when one remembers that at least as late as
Johnson's day many undergraduates remained in
residence for practically the whole year, and John
Wesley speaks of instruction going on regularly in
the vacations. But the scope even of the best was
unduly limited by circumstances ; and teaching
Fellows seem to have regarded tuition rather as an
interlude and 7ra/3€/37oi'than the business of their work-
ing lives. The relations between tutor and pupil
were formal, and — unless perhaps in cases where
the pupil might be considered as a future patron,
with fat livings in his gift — probably very few tutors
endeavoured to humanise them : the pleasant and
useful comradeship between Don and Man, teacher
and taught, which has later been one of the best
sides of academic life, was as yet apparently
unknown. Yet undoubtedly with the closing years
of the century matters begin to improve : the very

68 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

establishment of " Greats" proves that educational
ideals were rising. Writing in 1 8 1 5, an undergrad-
uate of Corpus Christi College says : ''The generality
of men read very much " : and in the next year,
" our tutors are most excellent, one of them most
exquisite. . . . Business is a pleasure under tutors
who excite so much interest towards it " : a state of
things which may, of course, be due to the influence
of the new examination system, but is more probably
traceable to less recent causes, — those, in fact, which
had themselves produced the said system. It is
true that the scheme of reading described by the
writer is not what we should call remarkably com-
prehensive. But it satisfied the ideas of the time ;
and this is no mean achievement At any rate,
modern Oxford has sometimes been reproached
for being unequal to it.

IV
FELLOWSHIPS

TO the general public, its older Universities
are naturally aggregates of Colleges : and
Colleges are sometimes (though it is often a mis-
leading criterion) judged according to the popular
estimation of their Fellows. These are the ob-
vious and patent element in the University, rightly
enough held responsible for the condition of the
whole body : and it is the standing crux of academic
reformers to bring Fellows and Fellowships into line
with modern ideas of" efficiency " without shattering
their meritorious programmes against the brazen
wall of Collegiate tradition. To the outside ob-
server, in short, the College Don is all-important,
whether for good or for evil. Universities without
Dons — without, that is, a definite governing class,
as clearly marked off from undergraduates as school-
masters from schoolboys — are not conceivable.
Yet it is necessary to remind the public that not
only Universities but even Colleges have existed
without Fellows. These latter, as a separate genus,

were not contemplated by the earliest of our pious

70 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

founders : like other important English institutions,
they were not made : they "kinder growed." During
more than a century after the first foundation of a
College, that is (for it is no longer customary to
credit Alfred with the endowment of University
College) from the later part of the thirteenth to the
close of the fourteenth century, the early collegians
are all alike "scholares," seniors and juniors: no
hard distinction is drawn, as in our day, between
governors and governed, " Don " and " Man " : and
the occasional mention of " socii," as in the early
chronicles of University College, need not imply
a broad line of division. But about 1400 (roughly)
the inevitable fact of the permanence of some
" scholares " and the transitoriness of others, —
causing Colleges to be, no doubt, practically ruled
by the older students, — comes to be recognised
officially and made a basis of subsequent legislation :
lawmakers, according to the good English custom,
taking into account and regularising conditions
which they found in existence. From this time
forward framers of College statutes use the term
" socius " in its modern sense of a senior member,
and therefore a governor of the foundation. " The
word Fellow " (say the historians of New College)
" in the Middle Ages meant simply comrade,
fellow-student : in a more technical sense, members
of the organised and self-governing community,
which lived in the same Hall, called one another
* Fellows.' The name naturally passed to the

FELLOWSHIPS 71

members of the endowed Hall or College : Wykeham
took the first step towards the specialisation of the
term by reserving it (though still with the epithets
' true and perpetual ') to the full or governing
members of the body. It was only later and very
gradually that the term 'scholar' came to signify
distinctively the inferior and merely temporary class
of foundationers " — what we know, in short, as the
undergraduate scholar. The foundation statutes of
early Colleges draw no clear dividing line. Some
scholars were young, some old : those who had
made up their minds to remain at Oxford would
naturally assume authority over the newcomers :
all alike were under the same rule, enjoying the
benefits of their Founder while they stayed in the
College, and no longer. That a Fellowship could
be held without residence — except under certain
specified conditions — was considered even in the
eighteenth century to be a scandal.

No doubt the imagined model for the earliest
Fellows was something like Chaucer's clerk of
Oxenford :

" For him was levere have at his beddes heede
Twenty bookes, clad in blak or reede,
Of Aristotle and his philosophye,
Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sawtrye " :

the ideal would be a studious recluse, one that
would gladly learn and gladly teach, protected by
College walls from the broils and turmoils which
disturbed the academic life of medieval " unattached

72 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

students." But Collegiate cloisters brought their
own distractions — the cares of this world and the
deceitfulness of riches. Colleges were not only
societies of serious students : they were also self-
governing communities, in most cases owners of
land. Within their walls, disputes about consti-
tutions and founders' intentions and difficulties of
estate management menaced the ideal of the
clerk of Oxenford; outside, the times were often
troublous, and even the impetus given by the
Revival of Learning hardly balanced the agitat-
ing effect of the Wars of the Roses, or the
Reformation. Oxford has always been keenly
sensitive to agitations of the body politic, and,
for good or evil, never neglected by the governing
forces of the country, — least of all, when Govern-
ments are insecure and need support or fear
hostility from seminaries of political or religious
opinion. As the University came to be more and
more an aggregate of Colleges, so its Colleges were
in an increasing degree objects of the patronage or
the suspicion of Governments ; and Fellowships, as
they increased in value, came to be regarded by
statesmen, lay and ecclesiastic, as rewards for
political support or religious orthodoxy. From
reign to reign, the position of Fellows was insecure.
The disendowment and dissolution of monasteries
might have afforded a dangerous precedent : that
peril, it is true. Colleges escaped, and Henry viii.
openly championed their interests ("I love not

FELLOWSHIPS 73

learning so ill that I will impair the revenues of
anie one House by a penie, whereby it may be
upholden ") : but the Reformation dealt hardly
with them. Fellows were expelled by Edward vi.
for Catholicism and by Mary for Protestant-
ism. Leicester's Chancellorship definitely excluded
Roman Catholics from the University. By the
time of the Civil War a Fellow had come to be
regarded as the holder of certain political opinions
and a sinecure. These political opinions were
mostly hostile to Parliamentarians : much Govern-
ment interference had effectually inculcated in
Oxonians the advisability of loyalty to the
monarchy. Charles was popular at Oxford, and
the University owed much to Laud : Cavalier
Fellows were therefore extruded by victorious
Puritanism, and duly restored (if still capable of
holding Fellowships) in 1661. Through the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries the seesaw of
alternate expulsion and restoration went on with
unabated vigour, and the changing personnel of
College governing bodies marked the political state
of England with the regularity of a barometer.
James 11. 's attempt to intrude a Roman Catholic
President into Magdalen was no isolated act of
tyranny : it was merely the continuation of the
policy of his predecessors in government during
the preceding two hundred years. It is the mis-
fortune of College Fellows that the events of history
so long taught them to associate well-being, not

74 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

with advancement of learning, but with adherence
to a party or a sect. Even now the effects of that
teaching are not altogether extinct.

Precarious tenure of fairly lucrative positions
produced long before the eighteenth century such
results as might be expected. Some of the
customary abuses which flourished without let or
hindrance in the age of Victoria had already begun
to show themselves under Elizabeth. That obvious
method of enriching oneself, to the detriment of
one's successors, by exacting fines on the granting
of long leases at low rentals, had to be checked by
an Elizabethan statute ; but the statute was evaded.
Further legislation in the same reign was directed
against the "corrupt resignation" — practically sale
— of Fellowships. Edward vi.'s Visitors, who
expelled Papists, "anticipated modern reforms"
(Mr. Brodrick writes in his History of Oxford) by
making "fellowships terminable, and tenable only
on condition of six months' residence " — an injunc-
tion which implies that the non-resident Fellow is
not of yesterday. Non-residents have indeed been
far more common in the nineteenth than in any
previous century ; yet it must be remembered that
absenteeism is a less crime in an age of facility of
communication, when the absentee need not alto-
gether lose touch with his College. And even
residents were not always what they should be :
Harrison, in his Description of Britaine (under
Elizabeth), laments the existence of men who "after

FELLOWSHIPS 75

forty years of age . . . give over their wonted
diligence and live like drone bees on the fat of
Colleges." Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona \ there
were good easy men supinely enjoying the benefits
of the founder, before the days of Mr. Gibbon.

At the opening of the eighteenth century many
Fellows are already " living like drone bees on the
fat of Colleges " — and that not only after they had
come to " forty year." The abuses of which we have
since heard so much are not nascent and in the
bud, but fully developed. Fellows are already too
rich and too idle. They do not use their endow-
ments as a temporary support until they shall have
qualified themselves for the service of the public —
the true object of pious Founders — but as per-
manent pensions for indolence : they live all their
lives within the College walls, where they are
" overrun with the spleen, and grow sottish." It
is to the credit of the age that it is dissatisfied with
its Universities in this and in other respects :
reforms are mooted : if hell is paved with good
intentions, the infernal regions owe much of their
pavement to the earlier part, at least, of the
eighteenth century. Dean Prideaux, sketching a
comprehensive scheme of administration for Uni-
versities, makes a notable proposal that Fellows
of twenty years' standing, who have not qualified
themselves for the public service, should be
relegated to a kind of almshouse (" Drone Hall "
was the nickname for the suggested institution),

^6 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

there to be supported by a pittance from their
Colleges : which could not justly complain of
being charged with the maintenance of these
effete persons, because a College ought to have
brought its Fellows up better. This is proof
positive of the existence of many Fellows who did
nothing by virtue of their office : such were already
the despair of the reformer and the stock-in-trade
of the satirist. The characteristic type, which is
only now beginning to disappear from such litera-
ture as troubles itself with University matters, was
formed before the reign of Queen Anne.

Satire, and especially the satire of his juniors
(unconscious that of them too the fable may one
day be narrated), has never spared this academic
type ; and caricatures of Dons in the eighteenth
century had the added charm of novelty. The
idle Fellow is the recognised butt of poetasters
in the collection of verses called the Oxford
Sausage :

"Within those walls, where thro' the glimmering shade
Appear the pamphlets in a mould'ring heap.
Each in his narrow bed till morning laid,
The peaceful Fellows of the College sleep.

" The tinkling bell proclaiming early prayers.
The noisy servants rattling o'er their head.
The calls of business, and domestic cares,
Ne'er rouse these sleepers from their downy bed.

"No chatt'ring females crowd their social fire,
No dread have they of discord and of strife :
Unknown the names of Husband and of Sire,
Unfelt the plagues of matrimonial life.

FELLOWSHIPS yy

"Oft have they bask'd along the sunny walls,

Oft have the benches bow'd beneath their weight :
How jocund are their looks when dinner calls !
How smoke the cutlets on their crowded plate ! "

''When any person," says Nicholas Amherst of
St. John's, writing in 1726, "is chosen fellow of
a college, he immediately becomes a freeholder,
and is settled for life in ease and plenty. ... He
wastes the rest of his days in luxury and idleness :
he enjoys himself, and is dead to the world : for a
senior fellow of a college lives and moulders away
in a supine and regular course of eating, drinking,
sleeping, and cheating the juniors." Truly the
Fellow of the later Victorian era has had much to
live down. One of the Christ Church " Carmina
Quadragesimalia " gives a picture of a Senior
Fellow's daily life as an illustration of the thesis
"An idem semper agat idem": it is not so very
long ago since there were some who might have
sat for the portrait, "Isis" (or else " Cherwell ")
"qua lambit muros!" It may be thus copied in
English :

" On Isis' banks the gazer may behold
An ancient Fellow in a College old,
Who lives by rule, and each returning day
Ne'er swerves a hairbreadth from the same old way.
Always within the memory of men
He's risen at eight and gone to bed at ten :
The same old cat his College room partakes,
The same old scout his bed each evening makes :
On mutton roast he daily dines in state
(Whole flocks have perished to supply his plate),

78 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Takes just one turn to catch the westering sun,
Then reads the paper, as he's always done :
Soon cracks in Common-room the same old jokes,
Drinking three glasses ere three pipes he smokes : —
And what he did while Charles our throne did fill
'Neath George's heir you'll find him doing still ! "

Towards the end of the century James of Queen's,
with the uncompromising severity of a serious
student, deals more harshly with the dignitaries of
his College. One would think that the gardens
of New College or Wadham or Magdalen Walks
should be haunted by the gentle ghosts of such
ancient pensioners, revisiting the glimpses of the
moon even in these changed and bustling days.
But there are no ghosts in Oxford. Either the
perennial renascence of youth scares them away :
or perhaps they are afraid of being investigated by
the Society for Psychical Research.

Satire and youthful acrimony need not, it is true,
be taken too seriously. A cynical and uncharitable
world always presumes idleness where there is a
lack of obvious incentive to activity : and is perhaps
inclined to take too little account of the business
of governing a College — a task often laborious and
sometimes even useful, to which many men vilified
as sinecurists have devoted years of unobtrusive
and therefore unrecognised energy. But satire
finds its justification in the circumstances of the
time, which were such as to make idleness only
too probable.

Fellows of Colleges are supposed, unlike the

FELLOWSHIPS 79

majority of men, to combine the practical with the
contemplative life. Two hundred years ago it
was the latter which was held most dangerous, as
tending to create the futile recluse — "a fellow that
puts on lined slippers and sits reasoning all the
morning, then goes to his meat when the bell
rings " : the Don of to-day is rather exposed to
the more insidious and perhaps equally demoralising
influences of the former — more insidious, because
the life of action is supposed to be more closely
allied with virtue or at least respectability. As
every one knows, it is the glory of the present
enlightened age that it has invented for graduates
so many forms of beneficent or at least not obvi-
ously maleficent activity. All sorts of occupations,
salaried or otherwise, await the choice of the
resident Fellow. He may teach and examine, he
may help to rule his College, or sit on the multi-
farious boards and committees which govern the
University. "Movements," academic or not, clamour
for his support or opposition : he may identify
himself with reform or obscurantism : he may
debate in Congregation and in Council whether
Oxford ought to approximate to the ideals of the
Middle Ages or of the midland counties. Meantime
the " ordinary " Fellow who does not reside is
certainly not tempted to abuse his short tenure :
his seven years' income Is an assistance to action,
which widens his field of choice, and provides the
necessary help which starts him on the avenue

8o OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

to the mitre or the woolsack or the editorial
chair.

But outlets for resident academic energy are
largely the creation of the nineteenth century, and
were for the most part unknown to its predecessor.
The junior Fellow of those days must have suffered
severely from lack of occupation. He had but little
share in the administration of his own College,
further than registering the decrees of the seniors,
in whose hands almost all power was vested. A
close corporation of Heads of Houses governed
the University : the subjects of most eighteenth
century debates in Convocation must have been
narrow and personal, the academic mind being not
as yet agitated by those larger and more interesting
questions which have been forced upon Oxford in
the last half-century by closer contact with the life
of the country in general : for the ordinary Master,
University business would consist in the very
frequent (some say an annual sixty or more) meetings
of Congregation to confer degrees, — a matter in
which spite and jobbery found ample scope. College
tuition was hardly the business of the majority, and
few tutors, as we have seen, were vividly alive to
their responsibilities : and the examinations of the
day can have been no serious part of the business
of life. Under the circumstances it was inevitable
that (unless he had the good fortune to belong to
a College at war within itself, as many Colleges
were at different times in the eighteenth century)

FELLOWSHIPS 8i

the average Fellow should succumb to the pressure
of the system to which he was born, and, unless
nature had formed him for fiery energies, should
devote his days to mild amusements and his evenings
to coffee-house discussion of national politics which
he could do nothing to influence. It is easy to say
that he should have roused himself to reconstruct
the system. Of course he should : but humanity
being what it is, the average well-meaning man in
all ages cannot be expected to do more than make
the best of existing circumstances. No doubt many
men were well enough satisfied with the comparative
ease and comfort of a competence and life in
College : but the active-minded who wished to do
something in life were necessarily on the horns of
a dilemma : there was little employment in Oxford,
and (non-residence being, as has been said, far more
severely discouraged than in the nineteenth century)
they were forbidden to seek it elsewhere on pain
of losing their Fellowships, — until towards the end
of the century custom began to allow considerable
leave of absence. It is true that the rule of residence
was sometimes relaxed for the benefit of Fellows
invited to act as tutors or chaplains to persons of
quality, — an obvious road to preferment, not with-
out its possible advantages for the College. Dr.
Lancaster, of Queen's College, " when he was a
Junior Fellow, liv'd some time as Chaplain to the
Earl of Denbigh : but in a little time return'd to
the College, and became Tutor to several young

82 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Gentlemen, and particularly to a Younger Son of
that Earl's. A little while after this 'twas his good
fortune to be remov'd from Oxford (where for the
sake of good Company he neglected most of his
business) " — we must remember that Dr. Lancaster
was not what Hearne calls an "honest" man — ''to
the Bishop of London, and became his Domestick
Chaplaine." Ex uno disce — at least multos. In
Oxford itself there were of course ample oppor-
tunities for serious study : and in truth many a
student of to-day harassed by the exigencies of our
more strenuous age and the difficulty of finding
fresh fields and pastures new not yet invaded by
the industrious Teuton, may envy the ampler leisure
of Hearne's contemporaries, and their larger
opportunities for original treatment. And indeed
there were makers of books in plenty among the
Dons of that day. But comparatively little work
was produced which has stood the test of time :
which is perhaps the gravest count in the indictment
of the period.

Serious study is not for all. The great majority
of Fellows simply enjoyed the benefits of their
Founders until it should be possible for them to
take a living and a wife : Warton's description (in
the Oxford Sausage) may be taken as generally
applicable. A victim to the " Progress of Discon-
tent," the hopeful scholar of his College

"intent on new designs
Sighs for a Fellowship — and Fines.

WILLIAM LANCASTER

FKOM AN ENGRAVING AFTER THE PAINTING BY T. MURRAY

FELLOWSHIPS 83

When nine full tedious winters past,

That utmost wish is crown'd at last ;

But the rich prize no sooner got,

Again he quarrels with his lot :

' These Fellowships are pretty things,

We live indeed like petty kings :

But who can bear to waste his whole age

Amid the dullness of a College,

Debarr'd the common joys of life,

And that prime bliss — a loving Wife ?

O ! what's a Table richly spread

Without a Woman at its head 1

Would some fat Benefice but fall,

Ye Feasts, ye Dinners ! farewell all !

To Offices I'd bid adieu.

Of Dean, Vice-praes, — of Bursar too j

Come joys, that rural quiet yields,

Come Tythe, and House, and fruitful Fields ! '

Too fond of liberty and ease

A Patron's vanity to please,

Long time he watches, and by stealth.

Each frail Incumbent's doubtful health ;

At length — and in his fortieth year,

A living drops — two hundred clear ! "

— only, as it appears, to leave the fortunate holder
still afflicted by that divine discontent which is
especially fostered by academies.

To be continually waiting and hoping for
"something to turn up" is not a wholesome
attitude : and eighteenth century Oxford was
demoralised by its constant looking for "prefer-
ment," whether by lucky accident or personal
favour. But even the Fellow greedily watching
the failing health of an incumbent is better off
than the ex-scholar who keeps an equally keen eye
on the possible preferment of the Fellow. In those

84 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

days of limited possibilities of occupation, Colleges
seem to have been haunted by graduates qualified
for succession to Fellowships, and anxiously waiting
till one should fall vacant. These unfortunate ex-
pectants were in most cases obliged to remain in
residence on pain of forfeiting their chance of
succession — sometimes the period of suspense would
last a dozen years. At Corpus (and probably else-
where as well) the " Disciple Masters of Arts," as
they were called, received a regular allowance : but
this was a mere pittance, insufficient for their
needs: and we find them in 1755 obtaining relief
at the hands of the Visitor from the necessity of
remaining in Oxford, waiting for dead men's shoes.
Obviously the evil was a crying one. " Their
residence," say the petitioners, "deprives them at
the same time of relieving their circumstances and
of following any useful vocation." " One cannot,"
says Dr. Fowler, the historian of the College, "but
look back with extreme pity on the dull and useless
lives of these young men, many of them with no
special avocation for literature, spent in narrow
circumstances, uncongenial surroundings, and en-
forced idleness. If they took to drinking, excessive
cardplaying, and loose habits, one can hardly feel
much surprise." Till 1768, M.A. scholars of Trinity
must reside constantly if they wanted Fellowships.
At Magdalen, Demies, territorially chosen, succeeded
to territorial Fellowships sometimes ten or even
fifteen years from matriculation.

FELLOWSHIPS 85

It can hardly be said that the long-expected
prize was such as would satisfy the avaricious :
still a Fellowship was a competence. A Fellow
could live fairiy well for about ;^ioo a year: at
Hart Hall this was about the income of the senior
members of the governing body : Prideaux' scheme
for University reform proposes the limitation of all
Fellowships to £60, which one may perhaps take
as something over the minimum "living wage" for
Oxonians in 17 15. Many no doubt received less :
Dr. Newton speaks of Fellowships of £^0 as a
typical sum : and the new foundation of Worcester
(17 14) provided that the six Fellows should receive
;^30 a year each, and the scholars £1^, 6s. 8d.
But there were doubtless innumerable pickings and
perquisites. The wealth of a Fellow depended
more than it does now on the financial circum-
stances of his College : even in our own day it is
difficult to generalise as to these entirely independent
societies. What is abundantly clear is that a Fellow-
ship was considered to be a prize worth taking some
little trouble to obtain, both as an immediate com-
petence and as the probable stepping-stone to
future wealth in the shape of a substantial living :
and if electors had to condescend to a little jobbery
— which did not, indeed, subject the average con-
science to a very severe strain — the desirability of
the end might be held to justify the somewhat
questionable means. It is to be feared that we
cannot credit the eighteenth century with a pedantic

86 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

purity in the matter of College elections : both
candidates and electors were prepared to stretch a
point occasionally. The qualification for candida-
ture in the case of a would-be Fellow was generally
the accident of birth in a particular locality : and
some candidates appear to have been born in
nearly as many places as Homer. " Mr. Elstobb,"
says Hearne, ..." when he was of Queen's College
appeared a candidate for a Fellowship of All Souls'
passing for a South Country man, but missing this
became a Northern man, and was upon that elected
one of Skirlaw's Fellows of University College.
The same Trick was played by one Dr. Stapleton,
who had a Yorkshire Scholarship in University
Coll. and afterwards a Fellowship of All Souls'
as born in ye Province of Canterbury. Likewise
one Mr. Rob. Grey, first a commoner of Queen's
Col. and afterwards Fellow of All Souls', his
Parents and Friends living all in NewCastle upon
Tine, upon pretence yt he was accidentally dropt
in London, obtained a place in Chichley's Founda-
tion,"— which seems to have offered peculiar
temptations to the frail, and to have been dis-
tinguished by the credulity of its electors.

It is interesting to find one College historian
commenting with apparent severity on the fact
that his College even two hundred years ago
would elect no Fellows save its own men. Such
seems to have been its invariable practice : but
perhaps the justification which later ages have

FELLOWSHIPS 87

pleaded was absent. When the governing body-
was reprimanded by the Visitor for the amiable
failing of regarding members of the College with
excessive partiality, its defence was obvious : ex-
traneous persons might be all very well as to mere
intellect, but you could never be sure about their
moral character. How far the examination of
candidates was anywhere a reality under the
circumstances, we are only permitted to conjecture.
Fellows were undoubtedly elected (according to the
convenient formula still known to one College at
least) "after an examination." Most Colleges
appear to have proposed some kind of intellectual
test : Merton elected a batch of no less than seven
Fellows in 1705 : "they stile it ye Golden Election
because they are all Excell' Scholars," says
Hearne, "especially three or four of them are said
to be as good as any in Oxford of their standing."
In the following year University elected Mr.
Hodgson, a Bachelor of Arts of about ten years'
standing: "a person well skill'd in Greek and
Latin (as appear'd from his performance when
examin'd) who may be a Credit to the College, if
he please, being of a Strong Body, and able to
go thro' some laudable undertaking." Evidently
there were examinations. But we are left in
ignorance as to the details : no examination papers
have survived : and we know that in these matters
the ideals of the eighteenth century were not ours.
Evidently also "interest" played its part in

88 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

elections. Hearne records an examination at Oriel
where nine candidates stood for three vacancies.
Oriel, Merton, and Wadham supplied the successful
aspirants : and Hearne is very bitter against the
electors for passing over Mr. Johnson of Christ
Church, who "stood and perform'd better, at least
as well as any." "One of ye Electors has himself
declar'd that he was engag'd sometime before the
time of Tryal by a Gentleman in ye Country " — a
plain proof that things are managed by interest and
not by merits : and indeed the diarist complains in
1727 that "learning is very little or not at all re-
garded " in elections to Fellowships. But the
reasons of" interest " (a thing hard to define) may be
manifold. Very often what charity would describe
as an amiable wish to see merit in one's friends
may be stigmatised by hostile critics as a discredit-
able job. In any case Hearne is no safe guide :
for his diagnosis of character is nearly always
determined by political feeling : and probably Mr.
Johnson of Christ Church was an "honest" man,
while his successful rivals were Whigs.

On the whole it appears that the temptations
of a Fellowship, by whatever methods it was to be
attained, were usually strong enough for the average
man of no vaulting ambitions. Its value might be
enhanced in various ways which our higher morality
disapproves. Terns Filius, that bitter enemy of
most academic dignitaries, must not, of course, be
always taken quite literally : but as the general

FELLOWSHIPS 89

trend of evidence does not contradict his strictures,
the reader is entitled to conclude that so much
smoke is an indication at least of some fire.
According to this satirist the Don of the period
(1726) adds to the income of his Fellowship in
various ways : ** not content with overgrown fellow-
ships for life, and college offices, they have lately
found out a method of augmenting them with good
livings, which according to statute and prescription
are untenable together."

It was not a very scrupulous age. The system
of "corrupt resignation" — under which Fellows
were understood to nominate their successors,
receiving a substantial consideration for so doing —
had indeed been abolished at All Souls', where the
abuse had been particularly rampant, not long
before 1700. But at New College it appears that
in 17 1 5 Fellowships were openly bought and sold.
Pluralism remained and flourished : indeed it is
only in comparatively recent years that public
opinion has been severe upon the pluralist.
Fellows compelled by statute to celibacy did
nevertheless marry — on the principle that you can
hold anything if you hold your tongue. Where
"Founder's kin" had a preferential claim to
election to Fellowships, as at All Souls', the
statute appears to have been applied (after the
College had indeed protested against the tyrannous
claims of consanguinity) with some considerable
latitude: the "blood of Chichele" was found to

90 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

flow in previously unsuspected channels : and the
system of co-optation on family or social grounds
turned that College at the close of the eighteenth
and the earlier part of the nineteenth century into
a preserve for a privileged circle of families. This
particular abuse, like other corruptions of the
system, grew and flourished more vigorously at the
end than at the beginning of the eighteenth
century : indeed it may be broadly stated that
while on the whole Colleges grow more conscientious
in educational matters after 1750 or thereabouts,
their ideas as to the tenure of Fellowships and
qualifications of candidates tend to become not more
but less rigorous : and the academic opinion of 1830
or 1840 is in these matters of a most complaisant
laxity. Withal, it is quite clear that individually
the Fellow of the early nineteenth century bore a
much better character than his predecessor. There
is no doubt that the age of Anne and the two
first Georges saw more of the wholly idle and
"apolaustic" Don.

To the genial humorist of the Oxford Sausage
the Fellow is primarily an eating animal — a
" Gormandizing Drone," as Miller's much earlier
** Humours of Oxford " puts it : "a dreaming, dull
Sot, that lives and rots, like a Frog in a Ditch, and
goes to the Devil at last, he scarce knows why."
Coming between the two last-quoted "authorities,"
the notorious Terrce Filiusoi 1733 describes senior
members of Colleges as generally votaries of

FELLOWSHIPS

pleasure in one form or another. Masters of Arts
at New College have a very bad character : that
learned foundation is composed of "golden scholars,
silver bachelors, leaden masters." But Shepilinda
the scandalous, with all her feminine suspicion of
Colleges, says that New College men all follow the
precept, Manners makyth Man — "especially the
polite Mr. Dobson," a person unknown to fame but
easy to imagine. All Souls' men are "smarts and
gallant gentlemen " : if a man in a play wishes to
personate a Fellow of Brasenose he must " wear a
pillow for a stomach " : at Lincoln, Shepilinda finds
no customs except gaming and guzzling ; however,
" they go to prayers twice a day." This is probably
mere fooling: yet the years about 1733 certainly
do not constitute a bright period in the annals of
Colleges : and it is noteworthy that in this very
year a satire was published attacking Fellows of
various foundations with peculiar virulence. It is
true that the author appears to have been an
embittered Whig. According to him, the Fellows
of Magdalen

" drink, look big,
Smoke much, think little, curse the freebom Whig."

Bowling and drinking, according to Shepilinda,
are the "two chief studies of this worthy Body";
while at Queen's, under the rule of " Morosus,"

" Pride and ill nature chiefly o'er them reign,
Learnedly dull, or ignorantly vain :

92 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Without wealth haughty, without merit proud,

In virtue silent, but in factions loud :

Upholders of old superstitious rules,

Dull in the Pulpit, Triflers in the Schools ;

To Power superior none such hatred bear.

Though none exact their own with greater Care."

In the (very serious) Advice to a Young Man of
Fortune and Rank upon his Entrance to the
University, published, apparently, towards the
close of the century, it is pointed out that even
Fellows should be treated with outward decorum.
Even though there may be " some not much to be
revered for either erudition or virtue," still ** the
rules of decent behaviour " must be observed towards
them. This is not very encouraging : it is an
equally serious matter when we find that picturesque
satire is at least not contradicted by sober record :
when a Fellow of New College is found guilty of
robbery : when the historian of All Souls' has to
chronicle riotous behaviour, open violation of the
statutes by marriage, refusals to take Orders, nay
even the keeping of dogs within the College walls.
No doubt these were scandals. But it is imprudent
to draw conclusions as to the state of the University
in general from the undeniable fact that College
history shows- — at least in the earlier part of the
century — a Newgate Calendar of irregularities and
derelictions of what we consider duty. The historian
of Oriel touches the heart of the matter when he
tells us that in the history of his College "dull
annals in the eighteenth century are an almost

FELLOWSHIPS 93

infallible indication of creditable behaviour" — that
Oriel is happiest when it has no history. Detected
crime is always chronicled, and very often makes
interesting reading : but no College has kept a
record of the virtuous acts of its members. It is
inevitable that academic vice should be more
prominent on the page of history than academic
virtue. In the worst ages there have been good
tutors and active administrators of their respective
societies : but the good tutor (unless, which is not
very often the case, he be a man of an original
genius) is a humdrum uninteresting creature : and
his memory is not kept green like his whose name
is enshrined in a ** Punishment Book." Doubtless
there was much idleness, and much time was wasted
on employments which we should not consider
academic in the proper sense. But many of the
failings of our predecessors may be palliated or at
least explained : the faults were often those of the
period : and the Fellow represented, more often
than he does in our more careful age, the "mean
sensual man" of the day. Something, no doubt,
can be said for close territorial elections : and some
modern reformers, satiated perhaps with the Victorian
cult of intellectual dexterity, have wished to return
to them : but they are not compatible with a high
average of talent. The whole system was to blame,
— a system especially difficult to alter because
based on the literal interpretation of statutes, yet
harmful because the statutes were meant to fit a

94 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

different state of society, — under which Colleges
without any violation of the letter of the law elected
persons who were often not particularly well qualified
for collegiate life and collegiate duties : and then
opened wide the doors of dalliance by making it
difficult for the Fellow to find adequate employ-
ment in Oxford while forbidding him on pain of
losing his means of support to seek it elsewhere.
Those who remained in Oxford and did not
succumb to the temptations of idleness are the
more praiseworthy : and of such there were not a
few.

Apart from the Heads of Houses — who were
quite as distinguished, in and outside Oxford, in
the eighteenth as in the nineteenth century, the roll
of Fellows of Oxford Colleges who were eminent
in their respective spheres at this period is not in-
deed a very long one : but quality may to a certain
extent atone for lack of quantity. In a sketch of
this kind one can only refer to Fellows who produced
at least some of their work at Oxford, and of whom
the Fellowship system may be considered to be so
far justified : but the system which is associated
with the names of the Wesleys and Blackstone
may at least claim to have made its mark on the
intellectual history of England. John Wesley was
elected to a territorial Fellowship at Lincoln in
1726, and held a tutorship there from 1729 to 1735 :
Charles being then a Student and Tutor at Christ
Church. Blackstone, a Pembroke man, was elected

FELLOWSHIPS 95

Fellow of All Souls' in 1 743 : his Commentaries on
the Laws of England are republished from the
Lectures on English Law which he delivered in
that College. The lecturer's demeanour did not
please Bentham, who heard him: he was "cold,
precise and wary, exhibiting a frigid pride " : but
these faults do not seem to have interfered with
the fame of the Commentaries. Blackstone may-
be claimed as a true son of Oxford, for he was a
man of many academic activities, and has left his
mark on the University in more ways than one :
he is known as a reformer of the Clarendon Press,
and as Michel Fellow of Queen's he was largely
responsible for the restoration of the new buildings
fronting the High Street — that '' recht k'dnigliches
Gebdude" as Zachary Uffenbach calls it. John
Mill, the Greek Testament critic and correspondent
of Bentley, was Principal of St. Edmund Hall at the
end of the seventeenth century. Lowth, Professor
of Poetry and lecturer on Isaiah, and Spence of
the Anecdotes, were Fellows of New College, —
for the most part non-resident : Spence was Professor
of Poetry too, and afterwards of Modern History :
"a man," says Dr. Johnson, "whose learning was
not very great and whose mind was not very
powerful," yet according to one of his friends "a
complete scholar." It is perhaps significant that
one finds the distinguished figures of the age among
its Poetry Professors. Such were the Wartons,
father and son : the father, a Magdalen man.

96 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

produced nothing considerable ; the son, a Fellow
of Trinity from 1752 to 1790, and perhaps the show
resident Fellow of his time, was a far more notable
personage, — poet, humorist, and scholar, the friend
of Johnson, the editor of Theocritus, and the
historian of English Poetry. Towards the end of
his life he was Camden Professor of Ancient
History and Poet Laureate, — a combination char-
acteristic of the days when " elegance " was a neces-
sary adjunct to learning. Addison was Fellow of
Magdalen from 1697 to 171 1 : and although Oxford
cannot claim to have been his home while he was
writing in the Spectator, he was still a Fellow when
he wrote his Travels, which Hearne calls a Book
very trite, being made up of nothing but scraps of
verses and things which have been observed over
and over. Addison as a Whig could not expect
warm commendation from the Tory sub-librarian.
But the Addisonian belles lettres represent the fine
flower of the kind of excellence which was aimed at
by the " wits " among Oxford Fellows of the time.
Such accomplishments make the representative
Fellows of the period. What public opinion ad-
mired was rather elegance in literature, than diligent
research and profound erudition. There were many
tasteful scholars and some industrious editors: "if
Oxford," says Mr. Wordsworth, "was behind hand
in developing her educational system as a University,
she was none the less most productive of individual
literary enterprise" — more so, that is, than Cam-

THOMAS WARTON

KROM AN ENGRAVING AFTER THE PAINTING BY SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS

FELLOWSHIPS 97

bridge. One reads in the pages of Hearne of many
Tories who have increased learning, and Whigs who
think they have. Whig and Tory aHke, they have
gone for the most part into the limbo of the upper
shelves of College libraries, where all things are
forgotten : and the learning of Germany reigns in
their stead.

COLLEGE LIFE

ABOUT, or shortly before, 1700, satire and
description generally begin to differentiate
between "Men" and "Dons": and the world
becomes interested in them as separate classes, not
as collectively "scholars." Few care very much
to hear about the life of schoolmasters and school-
boys : and " in earlier times," says Mr. Wordsworth,
" the relation between tutor and pupil at the Uni-
versities had been similar to that which has of late
so happily grown up in higher schools between boy
and master." ," Boys," writes the same author,
" when they arrived at Oxford or Cambridge in the
sixteenth or seventeenth century, still found the birch
at the buttery-hatch." But as the age of matricula-
tion tended to increase, and the simpler common
life (as of a school) began to make way for the
social habits of a community whose members were
theoretically old enough to follow each his respec-
tive bent, — the Don on the one hand and the Man
on the other entered on their long career of provid-
ing " copy " for contemporary satirists or humorous

COLLEGE LIFE 99

essayists : and the period abounded in such. Of
the two, the Fellow is most before the public eye,
and his social life and personal habits offer the
fairest game to the satirist — who is less than kind
to his foibles. At best, he is an ineffectual creature,
— " one that puts on lined slippers and sits reason-
ing " (an unpractical and un-English occupation) " till
the bell calls him to his meat." At worst, the
uncharitableness of a somewhat gross and material
age brands him as a rogue in grain, a Tartuffe, a
vicious hypocritical pedant. If these condemna-
tions are hardly justified by the facts of history, it
is nevertheless impossible to deny that the College
life of the early eighteenth century had its tempta-
tions. The resident Fellow of our own days is
a humdrum figure, quite useless for purposes of
satire, — at least such satire as would appeal to the
non-academical public. It would be absurd to
accuse him of lewdness and immorality, and even
the newspaper press has dismissed the illusion that
he is bibulous. He has no time or inclination for
aping the extreme modes of fashion : the necessities
of his profession (for he has a profession) and
increased contact with the outer world have
smoothed away his obvious eccentricities : he does
not always even live in a College. But his
predecessor of the reign of Queen Anne lived in
surroundings which tended to develop a strongly
marked individual type : for when Oxford was
separated from London, as it was till later, by a

lOO OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

coach journey of two winter days' length, contact
with the outer world cannot have done much to
tone down peculiarities of local growth. He was
doubly open to attack or ridicule. On the one
hand, he was understood to be perpetuating the
monastic and even ascetic conditions of College
life : on the other, he was as a matter of fact a
gentleman at large, amusing himself, within certain
limitations, very much as he pleased. He could
be chaffed by the outer world for being a collegian
(and to live in a College is to be suspected of
everything, especially by female satirists), and by
collegians for mixing in external society and trying
to copy its habits. Probably Fellows of the period
were neither worse nor better than their contem-
poraries : they suffered from want of occupation,
and a liberty to indulge their tastes which was
apt to degenerate into licence. The Fellow was
a gentleman of leisure waiting for a living. He
might teach a little or read a little or play with
a magnum opus. We cannot picture the rooms
of the average Don thronged by earnest learners
or the Bodleian crowded with serious students.
A comfortable slackness prevailed.

The arrangement of an Oxford day did not,
apparently, make for the strenuous life. Attend-
ance at chapel, nominally obligatory, is the first
incident: Dr. Prideaux' scheme of University re-
form places the chapel service at the intolerably
early hour of six : but the rule of attendance does

COLLEGE LIFE loi

not seem to have been universally rigorous. Break-
fast in the early century was hardly a regular meal
(a thing hardly credible to modern or recent
Oxonians) ; most would begin the day with a glass
of ale and a crust : persons who wished to be
thought fashionable would drink coffee, then a
rarity, and discuss the news of the day. Modern
Frenchmen would be at home in the Oxford of
Anne's day, so far as morning refection is concerned,
— the early coffee succeeded by the ddjeuner of the
forenoon. For dinner normally began at 1 1 : with
the usual progressive tendency of that meal, it was
postponed by some Colleges till 12 about 1720.
Hearne writes in 1721 : "Whereas the university
disputations on Ash Wednesday should begin at
I o'clock, they did not begin this year till two or
after, which is owing to several colleges having
altered their hours of dining from 11 to 12,
occasioned from people's lying in bed longer than
they used to do " — whereby we may conclude that
the average man did not consider the hours before
dinner as a serious part of the working day in 1720.
A year later the diarist complains that at St.
Edmund Hall dinner was at 1 2 and supper at 6,
and no fritters : on which he comments that "when
laudable old customs alter, 'tis a sign learning
dwindles." Dr. Macray notes that in 1753 the
Oxford dinner- hour was changed from 12 to i.
Dinner over, there were University exercises to
attend, for those who wished : but one cannot

I02 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

suppose that these were attractive to the general
public. Perhaps the tuition of youth might occupy
the earlier part of the afternoon : the Statutes of
Hart Hall name 2 to 6 as studying hours : but the
history of the first few decades of the century dwells
but lightly on education. What College teaching
there was would probably be given in the morning,
before dinner, when both tutor and pupil might be
supposed to be at their best and brightest. In the
afternoon, there would be for the graduate various
forms of leisure more or less learned : the student
would return to his books : the Senior Fellow of
the Christ Church Carmen Quadragesimale would
take his regular number of turns in the College
garden after the habitual quota of glasses of wine
and pipes of tobacco. For most, the social life of
the day began. In such Colleges as had common-
rooms there were long stances over what Hearne
calls Pipe and Pot ; College business, succession to
livings, and all the multifarious dull scandal of a
University town, helped to drowse away hours
of the afternoon : or politics aroused a keener
interest, and toasts were drunk which, in the
words of Mr. Gibbon, were not expressive of
the most lively devotion to the House of
Hanover.

" Return, ye days " (cries the beneficed ex-
Fellow in Warton's Progress of Discontent),

" when endless pleasure
I found in reading or in leisure !

^^^s^^^^^^

FROM AN ENGRAVING BY J. SKELTON

COLLEGE LIFE 103

When calm around the Common Room
I pufFd my daily pipe's perfume !
Rode for a stomach, and inspected,
At annual bottlings, corks selected :
And dined untax'd, untroubled, under
The portrait of our pious Founder ! "

But in the earliest years of the century not all
Colleges had common-rooms. Baskerville notes
towards the close of the seventeenth century that
Queen's has recently made for itself a "common
fireroom for ye graver people." (Shepilinda
speaks of the Queen's common-room as particularly
comfortable in 1738.) "Since this addition," he
says, "of common firerooms in most Colleges the
Seniors do retire after meals that the younger
people may have freedom to warm their toes and
fingers." Social meetings, especially of political
partisans, were held in the numerous coffee-houses
of the town, or such houses as " Antiquity Hall " or
that bearing the sign of "Whittington and his
Cat," the resort of Hearne and other " Honest "
men. Sometimes a College would have its own
particular house of call, — not all, one may hope,
like the favourite haunt of the Fellows of Balliol at
the end of the seventeenth century, "over against
Balliol College, a dingy, horrid, scandalous ale-
house, fit for none but draymen and tinkers. Here
the Balliol men continually lie, and by perpetual
bubbing add art to their natural stupidity to make
themselves sots." Throughout the century extra-
collegiate stances were more common than at

104 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

present. As late as 1782, Pastor Moritz, coming
late at night into the "Mitre" inn, "saw a great
number of clergymen, all with their gowns and
bands on, sitting round a large table, each with
his pot of beer before him." These reverend
gentlemen sat all night over their beer, discussing
theological and other topics; till "when morning

drew near, Mr. M suddenly exclaimed, ' D — n

me, I must read prayers this morning at All Souls'
— an expression which might have been somewhat
surprising to a less charitable observer than Moritz.
But the good Pastor, unlike the censorious Uffen-
bach, always tried to make allowances for the
English point of view.

For others, there were the numerous "coffee-
houses " which had rapidly become the fashion after
"the coffy-drink" had first been introduced into
England towards the end of the seventeenth
century, —

"Where the lewd spendthrift, falsely deemed polite.
Oft damns the humble sons of vulgar Ale."

To drink coffee, whether in the early morning or
afternoon, was apparently held by respectable con-
servatives to be a form of dissipation, a mere
excuse for idleness and vain babbling ; coffee-
houses were associated with the tattle of politics
and the great world, as common-rooms with
College "shop." More dangerous attractions were
offered by the shades of Merton Gardens and
Magdalen Walks, much affected as a promenade

COLLEGE LIFE 105

by the local beauties who aspired to figure as
"Oxford Toasts." Contemporary rhyme is con-
tinually celebrating the names — of course classical
according to eighteenth century rule — of these fair
ones : Oxford aped the modes of the metropolis.
There is a whole literature of the subject. The
amorous enthusiasm of a poem entitled ** Merton
Walks : or the Oxford Beauties," provokes
** Strephon's Revenge," a satire of more than
Juvenalian acrimony. Both run to extremes.
The encomiast of ** Oxford Beauties " is in a mere
rapture of eulogy :

" Who has not heard of the Idalian Grove,
Fit seat of Beauty, bUssful Scene of Love?
Alcinou^ Gardens ? or ArmidcCs Bow'rs
(Immortal Landskips, ever-blooming Flow'rs !)

O ! Merton ! cou'd I sing in equal days.
Not these alone shou'd boast Eternal Praise :
Thy soft Recesses, and thy cool Retreats,
Of Albion's brighter Nymphs the blissful seats,
Like Them for ever green, for ever young,
Shou'd bloom for ever in Poetick Song.
Let Others, Foes to Love, by Day, by Night,
With Toil drudge o'er the mighty Stagyrite :
Skill'd in Debates plead better at the Bar,
Or wage with nicer Acts the Pulpit War :
In loftier Strains, and all the Pomp of Verse,
Th' imagin'd Heroe's fancied Acts rehearse . . .
Be This, my Muse, thy no less glorious Care,
To sing Love's Joys, and celebrate the Fair ! "

But blissful Scenes of Love, as " Strephon "
points out in a ferocious satire, are not wholesome
for a learned University. The youth who frequents

io6 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

these soft recesses and cool retreats sooner or
later

"to vicious idle Courses takes,
His Logick- Studies and his Pray'rs forsakes :
Pufft up with Love, a studious Life he loaths.
And places all his learning in his Cloaths :
He Smarts, he Dances, at the Ball is seen,
And struts about the Room with saucy Mein.
In vain his Tutor, with a watchful Care,
Rebukes his Folly, warns him to beware :
In vain his Friends endeavour to controul
The stubborn, fatal Byass of his Soul :
In vain his Father with o'erflowing Eyes,
And mingled Threatnings, begs him to be Wise :
His Friends, his Tutors, and his Father fail.
Nor Tears, nor Threats, nor Duty will prevail :
His stronger Passions urge him to his Fall,
And deaf to Counsel he contemns them all."

Balancing eulogy and satire, the candid reader is
driven to the conclusion that Merton did well to
close its garden : and must reluctantly acknowledge
that Amanda and Lydia and Chloris, " Bright
Goddesses" of languishing undergraduates and
susceptible Dons, were for the most part the
daughters of small local tradesmen or College
servants — "of our Cobblers, Tinkers, Taylors,"
says the author of " Strephon's Revenge."

These early Fellows did not live in what we
should call luxury. Their rooms, as represented in
pictures, are severely plain, and their fare seems
to have been simple. The meals at the St. John's
high table, to judge from the menus preserved by
the learned historian of that College, were plain
enough. Dinners in Hall are considered by Uffen-

COLLEGE LIFE 107

bach "disgusting." There are "ugly coarse table-
cloths and square wooden plates." The Hall of
St. John's "does not smell so bad as others."
Persons of distinction (die Vornehmen) dine in their
rooms : but this involves " unheard of expense."

One knows little about the social life of eigh-
teenth century Dons : and most of what we do know
is trivial or depressing. The thing is natural
enough. Vice has its chronicles, virtue and re-
spectability go unsung : it is not necessary to pass
a sweeping condemnation on the pastimes and
businesses of graduates in general because the
latter were often futile and the former sometimes
scandalous. There were good men in plenty : but
it was the fault of the time that the average man,
formed and guided, as always, by fashion and cir-
cumstance, was not saved from himself by rational
academic occupations or even by the physical outlet
of sports and games. Celibates by compulsion,
herded together in Colleges with no necessary
aptitude for a life of education or research, often,
indeed, with no conception of a College except as
an unavoidable step to preferment in the outer
world, many graduates could naturally find nothing
better to do than to make College history such as
we know it — a tedious chronicle of quarrels, bicker-
ings, and backbitings, wrangles about politics and
College business. These things are written in the
pages of Hearne.

Yet for many Fellows the period need not have

1 08 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

been exactly one of mere dulness. However little
interesting to the non-academic world, the continual
storms in teapots which raged in University circles
— wranglings about discipline, statutes, national
politics, whether bearing directly on Oxford or not
— must have at least saved Hearne's contemporaries
from lives of actual lethargy. The worst that can
be said of the majority is that their activity was
generally misdirected. Peace succeeded to the
turbulent times of the early seventeen-hundreds :
after 1750 the social life of senior members of
Colleges became quieter and on the whole more
respectable — certainly more modern. Men dined
later (and probably as a consequence sat longer
over their wine : after a three or four o'clock
dinner the solid working-day might be considered
as gone) : and they wrangled less, as there was
less to wrangle about. Things had settled down.
The Jacobite cause was extinct. Victories or
compromises had settled the basis of College
government. Common-rooms were at peace within
themselves — less rancorous, if more torpid. With
no causes great or small to enlist his energies, the
resident Fellow who did not care to teach lapsed
into that sober, comfortable, gentlemanly leisure,
which remained unbroken till the rude interference
of Commissions a century later.

One need not be too pessimistic about their
shortcomings. Many, no doubt, lived the kind of
life which can be reconstructed from the day-book

COLLEGE LIFE 109

of Mr. John Collins, preserved to us by the
historian of Pembroke College. This gentleman,
a Berkshire man and Fellow of Pembroke about
1780, gives the impression of having been in his
youth a comfortable, easy-going, sporting parson,
taking his full share of mild amusements, and
probably not very seriously hampered by the
education of youth or even his clerical duties (he
had a curacy at Peasemore on the Berkshire downs
before he retired from Pembroke to a living in
Hertfordshire) : the extracts from his account-
book tell of losses at cards, shooting at Besilsleigh,
snipe-shooting at Fairford, cricket; "subscription
to y* Society for y" Propagation of Gospel,
10/6 : Abingdon Races, 8/." For many such
young Masters of Arts, their College would be an
agreeable place enough, till a living should fall
vacant. They did not organise movements or
advance the cause of scholarship : yet they played
a decorous enough part on the surprising stage of
English society, and the age which made them
what they were was apparently satisfied. Still it
must be admitted that founders did not contemplate
the Fellow of 1750-1850: nor can our later day
altogether comprehend him. He himself would
have been aghast at the reforms which turned
the modern Fellow into a schoolmaster, and
clothed him with Efficiency as with a garment.
It is to a somewhat earlier period — about the
middle of the eighteenth century — that Warton's

no OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Journal of a Senior Fellow or Genuine Idler
belongs.

''Monday, 9. Turned off my bedmaker for
waking me at eight. Consulted my weather-glass.
No hopes of a ride before dinner.

"10. After breakfast transcribed half a sermon
from Dr. Hickman. N.B. — Never to transcribe
any more from Calamy : Mrs. Pilcocks, at my
Curacy, having one vol. of that author laying in
her parlour-window.

"II. Went down into my cellar.

" I. Dined alone in my room on a sole. . . .
Sat down to a pint of Madeira. Mr. H. surprised
me over it. We finished two bottles of port
together, and were very cheerful.

** 6. Newspaper In the Common-room.

"7. Returned to my room, made a tiff of
warm punch, and to bed before nine." . . .

After all, even a quarter of a century ago there
were unoccupied resident Fellows.

But as the century advanced, if life was
emptier for some, it was fuller for others. If
the drones were sleepier, the working bees
of the Collegiate hive were more active, in
the legitimate sphere of teaching and College
discipline. Of course this cannot be predicated
of all Colleges. History continues to brand the
indolent tutor. But such plain statements as
Gibbon's admission that learning has been made

COLLEGE LIFE iii

"a duty, a pleasure, and even a fashion" clearly
point to improved ideals of activity among the
governors of Colleges.

If the Fellow of 1700 suffered from lack of
rational occupation, the curse of the undergraduate
of that day seems to have been an excess of
liberty, — liberty to which his age did not in general
entitle him. As has been said, it is hard to
dogmatise about age of matriculation : and in
fact variety appears to have been the rule.
Through most of the century, according to Dr.
Macray's Register of Magdalen College, matricula-
tion was commonest at sixteen or seventeen, but
quite at the close there are instances of fourteen
and even thirteen. " A precocious boy," says
Wordsworth, ''could enter at an age at which
nowadays he would be not only discouraged, but
practically inadmissible." Gibbon, as late as 1752,
matriculated at fourteen : but the Vindicator of
Magdalen College, while admitting that similar
instances have occurred, blames "the imprudence
of sending boys so hastily into the society of men."
Even in 1806, Keble matriculated at fourteen. In
or about 1700, a great many undergraduates must
have been young boys : yet it is sufficiently clear
from what is known of College life that the relations
between tutor and pupil were no longer those of
schoolmasters and schoolboys : and a tolerable
proportion of students were old enough to be fair
game for satire. This, indeed, has left no very

112 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

pleasing picture of undergraduate life. Anthony
Wood's strictures on the licentious habits of his
time have been already quoted. The rather lurid
picture of academic manners which he draws
accords only too well with the impression derived
from a satire entitled " Academia : or the Htwtours
of the University of Oxford, written by Mrs.
Alicia D'Anvers about 1690. Feminine wits have
not been invariably just to a University from which
they are excluded, and the humour of the Revolu-
tion period runs to grossness : yet history does not
contradict Mrs. D'Anvers : and on the whole it
seems probable that her diary of an undergraduate's
week is a fairly true picture of a typical Rake's
Progress. According to this lady, the student is
a creature of coarse vices and disreputable amuse-
ments, much left alone by his nominal pastors and
masters, and living a kind of " Quartier Latin "
existence. Common larceny does not come amiss
to him : the hero and his friends go out on a
poaching excursion, and steal countrywomen's hens
and bacon. As for reading —

"Folks can't do all at once, for look,
They've more to do than con a book,"

and if Proctors occasionally interfere with such
amusements as kissing Quakers' wives, or tutors
demand to be "satisfied," there is always some
easy way for ** Mr. Snear" out of a temporary
difficulty. One of his pretexts for idleness, it is

COLLEGE LIFE 113

interesting to note, is the time-honoured plea of
"People Up":

"Some Country Stranger, or a Brother,
Some Friend, Relation, or another,
Being come to Town only to stare.
Will be a week or Fortnight here :
And he can do no less, than go
Sometimes to wait on him, or so,
Treat him, go with him up and down,
At least, and show him all the Town :
That he at home might tell a story
O' th' Theatre and Laboratory.
And ever when one Stranger's gone,
Be sure they'll have another come :
And then you know it would be evil,
If they to Strangers be uncivil :
And then sometimes their Father sends.
Or else some other of their Friends,
(They say,) a Letter of Attorney,
Praying them to take a little Journey,"

evidently the excuse of Important Family Business
is not of an age, but for all time. At a much later
date (1727) Dr. Newton, the Principal of Hart
Hall, protests against the habit of wasting time and
money on entertaining strangers. If the Stranger
wishes to see students' life, he should dine at the
ordinary hall. If he only wants their conversation
in private rooms, let him refresh himself in his
Inn. It is monstrous (says Mr. Wordsworth,
abridging Newton) to allow your time and money
to be frittered away " in Absurd and Conceited
Entertainments for every trifling Acquaintance,
who has a mind to take Oxford and Blenheim on
his way to the Bath. I say trifling Acquaintance :
8

114 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

for no Man living, that is well bred and understands
what is proper, will ever Accept of an Entertain-
ment at a Scholar's Chamber."

The most constant drawback to undergraduate
happiness was, it appears, the ever present dun.

"Thus, while my joyless minutes tedious flow,
With looks demure, and silent pace, a Dun,
Horrible monster ! hated by gods and men,
To my aerial citadel ascends :
With hideous accents thrice he calls : I know
The voice ill-boding, and the solemn sound.
What should I do? or whither turn? amaz'd.
Confounded, to the dark recess I fly
Of wood-hole."

Thus the author of the " Splendid Shilling."
Tradesmen with their little bills were not, as at
present, excluded from Colleges : in the morning
they thronged the staircases, and the prudent
debtor would do well to keep his oak sported till
the dinner-hour ; after which, as we gather, he
enjoyed the privilege of a close time.

"Always when once 'tis afternoon
Duns with the Colleges have done :
And scholars, looking well about,
With caution venture to go out."

Excessive supervision may, perhaps, be sometimes
distasteful to the modern undergraduate : but at
least it protects him from his tailor. In Academia
the hero evades his enemies by the simple artifice
of pretending to be some one else, and telling them
that he himself is out. But if the danger could be
avoided in Colleges, outside there were obviously

JOSEPH ADDISON

FROM AN ENGRAVING AFTER THE PAINTIN(; BY G. KNELI.ER

COLLEGE LIFE 115

greater risks to be faced : Mrs D' An vers describes
in detail how. a Corpus Christi student, in order
to visit Weaver's dancing-school in Holywell, — a
favourite afternoon resort, — must perforce fetch a
compass through St. Ebbe's and St. Thomas',
lest by taking a direct route he should run the
gauntlet among the outraged purveyors of his
comforts.

The subject of this delectable satire has a room
to himself — probably, if one may judge from con-
temporary or later art, bare and bleak enough when
compared with the boudoir-like luxury of the modern
student. Single tenancy was now becoming the
custom. Till the Civil Wars, at any rate, senior
members of Colleges had often, if not regularly,
shared apartments with their juniors, — while the
relation was still that of master and schoolboy ;
and although Fellows and undergraduates no longer
thus lived together in 1700, joint undergraduate
occupation was not extinct. Addison and
Sacheverell — strange combination — were chamber-
fellows, when Demies of Magdalen at the end of
the seventeenth century. With the increasing age
of undergraduates, and the development of more
or less modern ideas of comfort, it became usual to
allot separate rooms to each undergraduate — that
is, if he was a scholar or commoner or gentleman-
commoner. Not so with George Whitefield, who,
when a servitor at Pembroke, "lay in the same
room " with others : or with the luckless youth whose

ii6 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

academic existence is described in a companion
picture of manners published some years after the
appearance of Academia, — a descriptive piece in
the metre and something of the manner of
Hudibras according to the literary fashion of
the time. According to this piece, which purports
to represent the personal experiences of the writer,
the "Servitour" lives in the most dismal and
squalid surroundings. He has come up to the
University like so many others in hope of
"Preferment." His father ("an aspiring husband-
man," says Mr. Wordsworth) hopes

" If he can get Prevarment here
Of Zeven or Eight Pounds a Year,
To preach and Zell a Cup of Beer
To help it out, he'll get good profit
And make a pretty Bus'ness of it " :

meantime this would-be parson-plus-publican sup-
ports life at the University with considerable
difficulty. At dinner-time he does not scruple to
steal odds and ends of dainties from the College
Kitchen —

"Poor Scraps, and cold, as I'm a Sinner,
Being all that he can get for Dinner."

His room is "a Garret lofty," from which

" he descends
By Ladder, which dire Fate portends — "

(As late as 1790 "Servitor in College garret" will
be only too glad to do gentlemen's impositions for
them.)

COLLEGE LIFE 117

"Once out of Curiosity
What Lodging th' had, I needs must see :
A Room with Dirt and Cobwebs lin'd,

Inhabited, let's see — by Four :
If I mistake not 'twas no more.

Their Dormerwindows with Brownpaper

Was patch'd to keep out Northern vapour.

The Tables broken Foot stood on,

An old Schrevelius' Lexicon

Here lay together, Authors various.

From Hefner's Iliad, to Cordelius.

And so abus'd was Aristotle

He only serv'd to stop a Bottle."

The whole picture is intended to be repulsive. Yet
after all, if the living be plain, it is something to
find Homer and Aristotle noticeable parts of an
Oxford scholar's possessions in 1709.

The now obsolete institution of servitorship has
been used as one of the many sticks wherewith to
beat the University. Looking back to the later
uses and development of the system, critics have
been inclined to condemn Oxford for deliberately
drawing invidious distinctions between the status
of rich and poor, who should be recognised as
equally entitled to the privileges of a seat of
learning. That mere poverty should be branded
with a social stigma is of course a thing intolerable,
and Colleges that perpetuated such a state of things
deserved no doubt all the hard names (and these
were many) that could be applied to them : still it
should be remembered that the very unsatisfactory

ii8 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

relation to Collegiate life of nineteenth century ser-
vitors at Oxford or sizars at Cambridge was only
a perversion of conditions which reflect nothing but
credit on the Universities where they were admitted
or established. Nothing could be more humane
and liberal — more consonant with the ideal of a
truly national University — than the original
intention of the institution of servitorship, in so far
as it designed to put University education within
the reach not only of rich and poor, but — what is
more difficult — of gentle and simple alike. " The
truth is," writes the historian of Pembroke College
most justly, "that servitorships and other grada-
tions of rank at the University belong to an older
and less sophisticated constitution of society. The
medieval University drew the studious and aspiring
of all ranks of life in vast numbers into its embrac-
ing commonwealth, each student retaining there
the social condition which was his at home. There
was no more degradation in service inside the
University than outside it. . . . The servitors of
a College corresponded to the lay brethren of a
monastery. They were not poor gentlemen, but
came from the plough and the shop." Boys of the
lower classes were encouraged to seek at Oxford,
often in the Colleges, employment of some such
kind as they were accustomed to in their own homes,
on the understanding that Colleges in return for
services rendered gave them their education.
While the relations between servitor and scholar or

COLLEGE LIFE 119

commoner were those of master and man, social
separation was quite natural and would not be felt
to be invidious : it became odious when, as later
happened, servitorships ceased to be held by sons
of "aspiring husbandmen " and suchlike, and began
to attract poor men of a rather higher social grade.
These latter inherited the advantages and the disad-
vantages of their humble predecessors, and social
deprivations which did no harm to the son of a
labourer were naturally felt by poor gentlemen.
Such, no doubt, servitors began to be early in the
century. From various causes, it seems to have
been realised that a University education was of no
particular advantage, in the circumstances of the
time, to the son of a "chimney sweeper and a poor
gingerbread woman," like the gentleman's servitor at
"Brazennose" College who appears as a character
in Baker's ** Act at Oxford " of 1704. His business
is (T quote from Mr. Wordsworth) to wait upon
Gentlemen-Commoners, to dress and clean their
shoes and make their exercises : he is an acknow-
ledged menial. But thirty years later " Mr.
Shenstone " (as we learn from that gentleman's
biographer, who publishes in 1788) "had one
ingenious and much-valued friend in Oxford, Mr.
Jago " (of University College) "his schoolfellow,
whom he could only visit in private as he wore a
servitor's gown : it being then deemed a great
disparagement for a commoner to appear in public
with one in that situation : which, by the way, would

I20 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

make one wish, with Dr. Johnson, that there were
no young people admitted, in that servile state, in a
place of liberal education." This Mr. Jago, we are
told, was the son of a clergyman in Warwickshire,
with a large family. Here is the system with all
the invidia which later attached to it, full blown
already. About the same time George Whitefield
was admitted a servitor at Pembroke : he had been
a drawer at his father's inn at Gloucester, "and
found," he says, "my having been used to a
publick-house was now of service to me " : so that
many gentlemen chose him to be their servitor.
Kennicott, the son of a baker, was a servitor at
Wadham in 1744. Evidently we are dealing in
these matters with a stage of transition. Drawers
at inns are still admitted to servitorships : sons of
clergymen have begun to seek these places.

Other times bring other manners for scholar
and commoner as for servitor. Changes in the
social state of England were at once reflected in
the Universities : the yeoman class, from which
these had largely drawn, was fast disappearing,
some sinking to be peasants, some rising to be
"gentlemen." This change differentiated rich
and poor, and began to turn the Universities
into finishing schools for the upper classes ex-
clusively : and inevitably the habits of the under-
graduate grew more "polite" than they had been
when he was for the most part drawn from a class
of small farmers. It was the misfortune — perhaps

COLLEGE LIFE 121

the inevitable misfortune — of the eighteenth century
that it left Oxford much less of a " national "
University than it found her. According to the
Oxford Magazine of 1769, the undergraduate of
that day is a "gentleman," with a proper contempt
for trade :

" But when become a son of Isis,
He justly all the world despises,
Soon clearly taught to understand
The dignity of gown and band,
Nor would his gownship e'er degrade
To walk with wealthiest son of trade."

This is a long way from Pope's family arrangement —

" Boastful and rough, your first son is a squire,
Your next a tradesman meek, and much a liar " :

the age of the Equality of Man was also that
of the differentiation of classes. Yet there were
compensations for the University, in ''politeness"
of manners. Even thirty years from the appearance
of Academia sensibly humanised the ways of
the undergraduate : mere vulgar raffishness and
rowdyism — an inheritance which the seventeenth
century bequeathed to the early eighteenth — had
had its day : the stringent discipline enforced by
some College authorities during the reigns of Anne
and George i. had purged away some of the
grosser forms of misbehaviour, and the fashionable
social life of London helped to divert youthful
extravagances into the harmless paths of mere
foppishness. Oxford, like London, had its wits
and beaux, its little ostentations of elegance in

122 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

dress and manner, and its social satire in verse or
prose recalling the manner of Tatler or Spectator,
— such as TerrcB Filius essay on the University
" Smart" in 1726 : " Mr. Frippery ... is a Smart
of the first rank, and is one of those who come, in
their academical undress, every morning between
ten and eleven to Lyne's coffee-house : after which
he takes a turn or two upon the Park, or under
Merton Wall, while the dull regulars are at dinner
in their hall, according to statute : about one he
dines alone in his chamber upon a boiled chicken,
or some pettitoes : after which he allows himself an
hour at least to dress in, to make his afternoon
appearance at Lyne's : from whence he adjourns to
Hamilton's about five : from whence (after strutting
about the room for a while, and drinking a dram
of citron) he goes to chapel, to shew how garterly
he dresses, and how well he can chaunt. After
prayers he drinks Tea with some celebrated toast,
and then waits upon her to Maudlin Grove, or
Paradise Garden, and back again." (It is recorded
in Oxoniana that the back door to Merton College
Garden was shut up in 17 17, on account of its
being too much frequented by young scholars and
ladies on Sunday nights.) "He seldom eats any
supper, and never reads anything but novels and
romances." This is not a day of desperate vicious-
ness. Indeed there would be no very great harm
about the Smart, were it not that he dresses beyond
his means : for he is not always a nobleman or a

COLLEGE LIFE 123

gentleman-commoner: his "stiff silk gown which
rustles in the wind," his "flaxen tie-wig, or some-
times a long natural one, which reaches down below
his rump," his "broad bully-cock'd hat, or a square
cap of above twice the usual size " — ^these gauds,
alas ! and the crurum non enarrabile tegmen,
are too often unpaid for. " I have observed," says
Terrce Filius, "a great many of these transitory
foplings, who came to the university with their
fathers (rusty, old country farmers) in linsey-wolsey
coats, greasy sunburnt heads of hair, clouted shoes,
yarn stockings, flapping hats, with silver hat-bands,
and long muslin neckcloths run with red at the
bottom. A month or two afterwards I have met
them with bob-wigs and new shoes, Oxford-cut : a
month or two more after this, they appear'd in
drugget cloaths and worsted stockings : then in
tye-wigs and ruflles : and then in silk gowns : till
by degrees they were metamorphosed into compleat
Smarts, and damn'd the old country putts, their
fathers, with twenty foppish airs and gesticulations."
And in later life "the polite Mr. Dobson of New
College" — who while at Oxford had "a delicate
jaunt in his gait, and smelt very philosophically
of essence " — turns into a divine, " walking with
demure looks and a holy leer " : " so easy is the
transition from the bowling-green to the pulpit ! "
Such metamorphoses are not of one period, nor are
they necessary signs of a decay of manners. Young
Oxford of 1730 or so had begun to take much

124 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

thought for its personal appearance. Reformers
like Dr. Newton condemned fine clothes: "finery,"
says the Principal, " in an University, amongst
scholars, in a scholar, and while he is professedly
in pursuit of those improvements which adorn the
mind, is, even in a person of fortune, an impropriety,
if not an absurdity." Such admonitions were as
effective as they generally are. Fashion, more
licentious than in our soberer age, prided itself on gay
colours : and even towards the end of the century
George Colman the younger was matriculated before
the Vice-Chancellor " in a grass-green coat."

The historian of wigs may find instruction in
the chronicles of Universities : for the wig in its
various forms was an important part of the toilet,
perhaps in Oxford even more than elsewhere.
" Ramillies " wigs, later called "tye-wigs" (it will
be remembered that Addison was described as "a
parson in a tye-wig "), were the characteristic head-
gear that stamped the man-about-town at least in
the early part of the century : we have seen that
the "Smart" wears one. Shenstone's biographer
records that "according to the unnatural taste
which then (1732) prevailed, every schoolboy, as
soon as he was entertained at the university, cut
off his hair, whatever it was : and, without any
regard to his complexion, put on a wig, black,
white, brown, or grizzle, as * lawless fancy ' sug-
gested. This fashion, no consideration could at
that time have induced Mr. Shenstone to comply

COLLEGE LIFE 125

with. He wore his hair, however, almost in the
graceful manner which has since generally pre-
vailed" (this is written in 1788): "but as his
person was rather large for so young a man, and
his hair coarse, it often exposed him to the ill-
natured remarks of people who had not half his
sense " — but who no doubt criticised Mr. Shenstone
with that freedom from which an unwieldy person
and a careless coiffure has seldom been exempt in
Universities. Apparently the natural progression
was from a " Bobwig," worn by undergraduates, to
the "Grizzle" which decked maturer age, and was
far more ample and generally imposing. One of
the poets of the Oxford Sausage, writing about
1760, deplores the necessity of discarding his
"Bob" in an "Ode to a Grizzle Wig," a formid-
able headgear which his scout in the accompanying
illustration is just presenting to him :

"All hail, ye Curls, that rang'd in reverend row.
With snowy pomp my conscious shoulders hide !
That fall beneath in venerable flow,
And crown my brows above with feathery pride !

" But thou, farewell, my Bob ! whose thin-wove thatch
Was stor'd with quips and cranks and wanton wiles.
That love to live within the one-curl'd Scratch,
With Fun, and all the family of Smiles" :

but about 1760, too, Bentham's hair "was turned
up in the shape of a kidney," this shape being,
according to his biographer, prescribed by the
Statutes, presumably for no other purpose than to
cause "grievous annoyance." Under the circum-

126 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

stances barbers were very important functionaries,
as the wig, and later the hair, had to be combed,
curled, and powdered. It is said that W. S.
Landor, whom Southey remembered as a "mad
Jacobin," was the first undergraduate who wore his
hair without powder. " The barber's was the only
trade," says Mr. Wordsworth, " which might be fol-
lowed by matriculated persons." The attentions of

" Highland barber, far-famed Duff,"

are a necessary preliminary to dinner towards
the end of the century. The advertiser in the
Oxford Journal for 1762 who wants "a sober
man-servant," adds, "If he can dress a wig the
more agreeable."

Probably the Smart is a fair enough picture,
allowance being made for the business of a satirist.
It is at least not contradicted by a contemporary
diary which has been preserved to us by the
historian of Pembroke College. The diarist
has serious intellectual tastes : but granting that
satire would naturally ignore these, he is a person
of whom Amherst's portrait might be a very toler-
able caricature. He was Mr. Erasmus Philipps, of
a very well-known Welsh family : a Fellow Com-
moner who, to judge from his diary, had a country
gentleman's natural interest in sport, but was able
also to find distractions in literature and the society
of thelearned : very far from being a mere Bob Acres.
Thus some of the earliest entries in his record relate
to races on Port Meadow : two days afterwards " I

COLLEGE LIFE 127

was made free of the Bodleian Library," to which next
day Mr. Philipps presents a Malabar Grammar, a
very great curiosity : at the same time presenting
" Pembroke College Library with Mr. Prior's Works
in Folio, neatly bound, which cost me £1, 3s." In
July of the next year " Went to the Tuns with Tho.
Beale, Esq. (Gent. Commoner), Mr. Hume, and
Mr. Sylvester, Pembrokians, where Motto'd Epi-
grammatiz'd, etc." — like any "Wits" of the day
at a London coffee-house. About the same time
the writer "sent Mr. Wm. Wightwick, Demy of
Magdalene College, a copy of Verses on his leaving
Pembroke " : and in the same month " Mr. Solomon
Negri (a Native of Damascus), a great critic in the
Arabick Language and perfect Master of the French
and Italian Tongues, came to Oxford, to consult
and transcribe some Arabick Manuscripts in the
Bodleian Library : fell acquainted with this Gent,
and with Mr. Hill, an ingenious friend of his that
came down with him : and enjoy'd abundance of
satisfaction in their conversation." Evidently this
young man was no mere butterfly of fashion. If
he goes "a Fox-hunting" with various persons of
quality, and joins his friends in "making a Private
Ball" for some Oxford ladies, we also find him "at
Mr. Tristram's Chambers with Mr. Wanley, the
famous Antiquarian, Keeper of the Harleian
Library, Mr. Bowles, Keeper of the Bodleian
Library, and Mr. Hunt of Hart Hall, who is skill'd
in Arabick " : or he records how he " went with Mr.

128 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Tristram to the Poetical Club (whereof he is a
member) at the Tuns (kept by Mr. Broadgate),
where met Dr. Evans, Fellow of St. John's, and Mr.
Jno. Jones, Fellow of Baliol, Member of the
Club. . . . Drank Gallicia Wine, and was enter-
tained with two Fables of the Doctor's Composition,
which were indeed masterly in their kind : But the
Dr. is allowed to have a peculiar knack, and to
excell all Mankind at a Fable." Later, "went to
Portmead, where Lord Tracey's Mare Whimsey
(the Swiftest Galloper in England) ran against Mr.
Garrard's Smock-faced Molly, and won the Size
Money (a purse of forty guineas) with all the facility
imaginable. She gallops, indeed, at an incredible
rate, and has true mettle to carry it on. Upon this
occasion I co'ld not help thinking of Job's descrip-
tion of the Horse, and particularly of that expression
in it, He swalloweth the ground, which is an
Expression for Prodigious Swiftness in use among
the Arabians, Job's Countrymen, at this day. . . .
Went to the races at Bicester. This place is also
call'd Burcester, perhaps, as much as to say
Birini Castrum." It does not appear that Mr.
Philipps was seriously incommoded by tutors and
lecturers : perhaps there were not many to trouble
him ; or as a Fellow commoner he may have been
specially privileged. He was no serious student :
yet not a Philistine, but a cultured dilettante who
could dabble in belles le tires and Oriental languages
and British antiquities, — the favourite pursuits of

COLLEGE LIFE 129

the learned in the Oxford of that day. One never
can tell — but I am afraid that not very many
present - day Oxonians who ride with " The
Bicester " meditate on Birini Castrum. Their
antiquarian tastes are directed into other and more
severely practical channels.

Fellow commoners like Mr. Philipps had not
yet become a serious embarrassment to College dis-
ciplinarians. They would be still for the most part
drawn from the country gentlemen, a class keen
enough about open-air sports but not very much
given to lavish ostentation and expensive living :
and would be on the whole, it is probable, orderly
members of Collegiate society where some of their
Dons had a good deal in common with them.
Inconveniences arose later when the sons of
nouveaux riches came up to the University with
the express purpose of "cutting a dash," and show-
ing that if their fathers could make money, they
could spend it.

Some thirty years after Terrce Films' picture of
the Smart, the "Lounger's" diary (in the Oxford
Sausage) is very much on the same lines : except
that in 1760, wine, rather than the society of the fair,
seems to be the attraction. The Lounger " topes
all night and trifles all day " : compulsory lectures
are far from him, as from the Smart. He break-
fasts at ten, and after that meal feels strong enough
to blow a tune on the flute, — an offence for which
Apollo flayed Marsyas, and a modern musician
9

130 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

would probably be severely reprimanded by his
Dean. After this he chats with a friend or reads
a play till dinner : which is followed by a visit to
"Tom's" or "James"' coffee-house.

"From the coffee-house then I to Tennis away,
And at five I post back to my College to pray :
I sup before eight, and secure from all duns,
Undauntedly march to the Mitre or Tuns :
Where in Punch or good claret my sorrows I drown,
And toss off a bowl * To the best in the town ' :
At one in the morning, I call what's to pay.
Then home to my College I stagger away."

Breakfast is by this time a regular event in the day.
In the early part of the century it was regarded rather
as a mischievous and time-wasting innovation : and
certainly the "Jentacular Confabulations" stigma-
tised by Dr. Newton of Hart Hall, must have been
a serious impediment to the morning's work, in the
days when dinner was at noon or earlier. Even in
1732 Pembroke men breakfasted and sat long over
the meal. In 1733, Richard Congreve of Christ
Church breakfasted on tea — by preference, " that
which is made of herbs, such as sage, balm, coles-
foot, and the like." Mr. Graves, Shenstone's
biographer, accepted an invitation to breakfast with
the poet at his chambers, "which, according to the
sociable disposition of most young people, was
protracted to a late hour."

Smarts and Loungers no doubt lived idly, and
probably life was becoming more comfortable and
comparatively luxurious : though to modern eyes

COLLEGE LIFE 131

their surroundings represent, if contemporary art
can be trusted, the extreme of discomfort. Christ
Church in 1780 " was so completely crammed that
shelving garrets and even unwholesome cellars "
were inhabited by well-to-do undergraduates. But
more than fifty years before this the incoming Vice-
Chancellor urged the magistrates of the University
to check luxury : whereas it is well known (says
Hearne) that there are no greater Epicureans than
Heads of Houses. At any rate it cannot be said
that University life entailed, certainly till late in
the century, much necessary expense. Richard
Congreve could live at Christ Church for ;^6o.
"A small specimen," he says, "of some of our
settled expenses I'll give you :

"Rooms ;^8 8 o

Tutor 880

Commons and Battlings . . . 20 o o

Laundress 200

Bedmaker i 12 o

Coals and Candles . . . . 3 10 o"

Towards 1750 the increase of luxury alarmed Dr.
Newton : according to his Statutes for Hart Hall
room rent was never to be more than £(i yearly,
and no Scholar's weekly "Battels" to exceed
4s. 6d. : it is true that Dr. Newton's ideal fare for a
Scholar was apple-dumplings and small beer, — an
excess of simplicity against which Amherst justly
protests in TetrcE Filius. But about the same
time " Battels " at St. John's rarely exceeded £Z a

132 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

term. Ten years later ;^8o a year was said to
be enough for a commoner of Balliol, though a
gentleman-commoner of that College might spend
;^200. Even an annual ;!^8o, considering the
change in the value of money, represents a sub-
stantial income : and no doubt towards the end of
the century, with the growing exclusiveness of the
University, ideals of expenditure would change, and
College charges probably become higher. In 177 1,
according to a writer in the Gentlemati s Magazine,
"a complaint is daily made that the admissions into
our Colleges are much fewer than they formerly
were. This diminution is attributed partly to the
perhaps unavoidable increase of the expense of an
Academical Education." The later period intro-
duced various changes — indeed, a different atmo-
sphere.

But the habits of the Smart and even of the
Lounger do not seem to have been really typical of
the student life of the later years of the eighteenth
century. Times and manners were changing :
greater strictness, better government, less individ-
ualism, a different and on the whole a healthier
public opinion prevailed : social life tended to
centralise itself within the walls of colleges. We
hear much less of the dubious attractions of Merton
Walks and Magdalen Grove and Paradise Garden :
much less of revelry in "Pot-house snug," or
" Splendid Tavern," or such fashionable spots as
the

COLLEGE LIFE 133

" coffee-house
Of James or Juggins, where the grateful breath
Of loath'd tobacco ne'er diffus'd its balm."

Reminiscences which refer to a later date than 1760
or thereabouts are rather of College life in the exact
sense. Such is the diary of a Trinity man who
matriculated perhaps in 1790. Ipse dies pulchro
distinguitur ordine rerum. Chapel, breakfast at
half-past eight, reading or lectures from half-past
nine to one : an hour and three-quarters for air and
exercise : dressing for dinner at a quarter to three,
and then at three the central event of the day —
dinner-time having by this time advanced just four
hours (at what is apparently its normal rate of pro-
gression) since the beginning of the eighteenth,
as it changed from three to seven in the nine-
teenth century. After the meal comes a classical
recitation :

"'Tis then before concluding grace

Some gownsman rising from his place,
While servants bustle out,

Towards the Griffin walking slow

To fellows makes initial bow
And then begins to spout.

" Mi/i/ti/ a«Se 6ia then
Or verses from the Mantuan pen

Sound in melodious strains,
Or lines from Milton's Paradise
With emphasis deliver'd nice
A just applause obtains."

After dinner, the day is considered over, and
the remaining hours may be spent in social festivity.

134 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Men meet in College for "wines," cut the five
o'clock chapel, and are royally drunk by six.
About nine the scout appears with a substantial
supper, but none of the party being in a condition
to eat it, he earns this very ample perquisite by
helping the revellers across the quadrangle to their
respective beds. This kind of orgie, the diarist
is careful to point out, is not of daily occurrence :

"Yet, my friend Will, you don't suppose
That thus alike all evenings close

And gownsmen all are such ?
No, no ! believe me, now and then
They will exceed like other men.
So did the grave phiz'd Dutch,"

and to get as excessively drunk as Mynheer van
Dunck was a social peccadillo easily condoned in
the later years of the eighteenth century. Whether
in this respect the University along with the rest
of England had deteriorated, and society was
soberer under Anne than under George iii., it is
hard to say : Hearne in the early century abounds
with notices of hard-drinking Fellows. But it is
easy enough to see that, granting the absence of
public feeling against drunkenness, there was much
in Oxford to encourage it. For one thing, there
was more money to spend. One of the features
of the century is the disappearance of the
small squirearchy, — the "old rusty farmers" whom
Terrce Filius used to see bringing their clownish
sons up to the University in 1720: and the
accompanying more definite demarcation of an

COLLEGE LIFE 135

upper and lower class — a separation which is
perhaps our most regrettable inheritance from the
Georgian age — helped to ** denationalise " Oxford,
and practically turn Alma Mater into a University
for " gentlemen " — at least, for the richer and
socially higher : as indeed she remained for the
first four decades of the nineteenth century. It
will be seen later that one of the charges against
the expelled Methodists in 1768 was that they
had followed humble callings and were not fit to
associate with gentlemen, — an argument which
carried weight then, but certainly would not have
been used fifty years earlier. Growing wealth,
then, was partly to blame : and the lack of incentives
to any kind of exertion is some explanation of
tippling, if no excuse. Nor must it be forgotten
that, as the Trinity diarist points out, the afternoon
and evening were not invariably spent in bacchan-
alian orgies. There were other and humaner
occupations : apparently not, in the Trinity of
that day, reading : but soirees musicales were
customary :

"Then Crotch and two musicians more
And amateurs near half a score

To play in concert meet.
Our chairs to Warren's rooms we move
And those who strains melodious love

Enjoy a real treat."

Crotch, who

" As director of the band
On harpsichord with rapid hand
Sweeps the full chord,"

136 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

cannot at the time (about 1791) have been more
than fifteen : he was Professor of Music six years
later. Music has not invariably flourished at
Oxford : but at least it may be said that the
University has not been unkind to the ars musica.
In fact in 1733, Hearne, a conservative and no
friend to Germans, or indeed any foreigners (he
had the true Tory spirit), deplores an over-
indulgence to foreign musicians: "one Handel,
a foreigner," having been allowed the use of the
Theatre by the Vice-Chancellor, "who is much
blamed for it." Handel and his musicians appear
to have performed five times in the Theatre during
July of 1733 ("N.B," — Hearne writes, "His book
— not worth id. he sells for is.") : while Mr.
Powel the Superior Bedel of Divinity sang with
them all alone, — a thing not easy to realise.

"When Mr. Fosset strikes the strings" —

thus Shepilinda, of what she calls a "Consort" —

"He does us all inspire.
But more when Mr. Powel sings
In concert with his lyre."

But in spite of Hearne's discontent, "about the
middle of the century," Mr. Wordsworth writes,
" music had taken some root in the Universities " :
and according to the author of the Academic in 1750
"a Taste for Musick, modern Languages, and
other the polite Entertainments of the Gentlemen,
have succeeded to Clubs and Bacchanalian Routs."
This is a little too optimistic : drinking was not

COLLEGE LIFE 137

on the decrease : yet at least conviviality was
tempered by the ingenuous arts. The Oxford
Journal for 1763 advertises concerts of vocal
and instrumental music every Monday except in
August and September : and an oratorio once
a term.

It is inevitable that history should lay dis-
proportionate stress on occupations not in them-
selves strictly academic, such as playing the
harpsichord, or getting drunk. But the com-
parative silence of chroniclers should not blind
students of history to the fact that there were
reading men and even reading sets : although
tutors might be slack and examinations practically
non-existent as tests of ability or industry, classical
literature possessed much of the charm of novelty :
and even though the divine love of learning might
be absent, yet many a poor and ambitious youth
would find an adequate incentive to study in the
desire to stand well with the authorities of his
College, as offering the most obvious and perhaps
the only road to preferment. Twenty years before
Gibbon found the University given over to idle-
ness, Richard Graves, on his first arrival at Pem-
broke, "was invited, by a very worthy person now
living, to a very sober little party, who amused
themselves in the evening with reading Greek and
drinking water." It is true that he was seduced
from these irreproachable recreations first into the
society of a "set of jolly, sprightly young fellows,"

138 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

who "sung bacchanalian catches the whole
evening " : and next into an equally reprehensible
if more elegant company of gentlemen-commoners,
who treated him with port-wine, arrack-punch, and
claret, — and were, in short, " what were then called
* bucks of the first head.' "

No such irregularities marred the career of
Mr. James of Queen's College, that virtuous man
and serious student. The intellectual condition of
his College was indeed not such as to satisfy the
aspirations of a studious and ambitious reading-
man. Young James and his correspondents and
relations are very severe upon "the farce of dis-
cipline and the freezing indifference " of that society :
the "lethargy of a cloister," and the miserable
condition of Fellows who (under the liberal pretence
of educating youth) spend half their lives in
smoking tobacco and reading the newspapers, and
at their best can only be described as "Academic
Baviuses." Certainly it appears that the Queen's
of that day was hardly animated by a progressive
spirit of enlightenment. Nevertheless it had its
uses (in James' eyes) as a place of "good and
wholesome probation " ; and at least — except that
the midday hours from eleven to one must be given
to the study of logic — there was no actual obstacle
to reading. A studious man of those days would
begin to read at nine, and after logic and a one-
o'clock dinner could give the afternoon to the
classics and a constitutional walk : " now and

COLLEGE LIFE 139

then," says the exemplary James, "after supper,
I sit with my friends, and seldom walk out without
company " (fiera crmjipovo^ -^Xiklootov), ** and, as our
conversation is either literary or, at least, innocent
and entertaining, I hope to receive benefit from it."
Altogether a quiet and industrious foundationer
could find congenial society and even a considerable
stimulus to exertion in the Oxford of 1780:
" College," says one of James' friends, " is a happy
place for reading." After all, the eighteenth century
was no bad time for the "serious student," who,
under its laisser faire conditions, was comparatively
free from obligations which a more strenuous age
has imposed upon him : and perhaps the verdict of
future centuries may condemn a system like our
own, under which Mr. Lempriere of Pembroke would
certainly have found it difficult to begin the com-
pilation of his Classical Dictionary while still an
undergraduate. For James, if tutors and lecturers
were less helpful than they might be, there were
already a few academic prizes open to competition.
The first Craven Scholarship was awarded in
1726: the record of the Chancellor's Latin Verse
and English Essay Prizes begins in 1768 : and the
first Newdigate prize was awarded in the same
year, for a poem on the Conquest of Quebec. It
is interesting to hear that a "prodigious number"
of men entered for the Latin Verse prize of 1779
— the subject being Electricity : and " wagers are
laid that it will fall to Christ Church. I confess,"

140 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

says James, "that they bid fairer than any other
single College, from their superiour number of verse-
writers." James, indeed, was anxious to be admitted
a member of the Christ Church foundation, in the
hope of finding there a more sympathetic atmo-
sphere among the young gentlemen for whom
learning was a Duty, a Pleasure, and even a
Fashion : but Dr. Browne, then a Canon, from
whom much was hoped, proved but a broken reed :
and in fact "really has had the meanness and the
folly to inquire of the Provost and Fellows of
Queen's into the young man's character." One is
sure that Dr. Browne could never have heard any-
thing to the young man's disadvantage even from
Academic Baviuses : but, for whatever reason, the
doors of Christ Church were closed. James
finished his career at Queen's with great credit.

There was a good deal of actual study : and the
brain of Oxford was developing in other directions.
Signs of a general intellectual awakening began to
show themselves; witness such a scheme as that
of T. F. Dibdin and his friends, who, dissatisfied
with the general ** somnolency " of the University,
proposed to found a society to be called a " Society
for Scientific and Literary Disquisition." We have
heard of such since : but in 1795 the novelty of the
scheme was calculated to alarm the prudent. The
promoters, wishing to hold their meetings in a hired
house under official sanction, applied to the Vice-
Chancellor for his permission. But academic

COLLEGE LIFE

141

authority, alarmed by the excesses of the French
Revolution, seldom erred in the direction of rash
concession : and discussion was officially labelled
dangerous. Dr. Wills, after a week's consideration
of the rules and regulations framed for the proposed
club, addressed a deputation which waited on him
in the following highly characteristic language :
" Gentlemen, there does not appear to be anything
in these laws subversive of academic discipline, or
contrary to the statutes of the University — but as
it is impossible to predict how they may operate,
and as innovations of this sort, and in these times,
may have a tendency which may be as little anti-
cipated as it may be distressing to the framers of
such laws, I am compelled, in the exercise of my
magisterial authority, as vice-chancellor, to interdict
your meeting in the manner proposed." If, as
Dibdin supposes, the tone of this answer was
dictated by so enlightened a Head as the great
Cyril Jackson himself, it is a very striking indi-
cation of the temper of the time. The club was
eventually formed, but as a private and unrecog-
nised society, meeting in College rooms : Edward
Copleston, subsequently Provost of Oriel and Bishop
of Llandaff, was one of its earliest members. It had
some reputation in its day. Dibdin is probably
justified in claiming that the liberalised spirit which
reformed the examination statutes at the beginning
of the nineteenth century was in great measure
fostered by the " Lunatics," — as they were nick-

142 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

named, and indeed themselves preferred to be
called.

Here, at least, is a sign of awakening intelli-
gence : and the undoubted fact is that one can
recognise a vast improvement in tone and atmo-
sphere as the end of the century draws near. In
spite of a good deal of torpor, and a good deal of
militant conservatism, Oxford in general could not
but feel the social civilisation of the time, and
necessarily bear her part in the improvement : a
fact for which her tutors deserve at least some credit.
Colleges were no longer mere lodging-houses for ill-
behaved, overgrown schoolboys, but centres in many
cases of intellectual life, rational enjoyment, and
cheerful companionship. It was even possible to
record a sentimental affection for the University
as a place of agreeable studies and friendships and
harmless pleasures : one notes a growing realisation
of the charm of the genius loci — the charm which
captivates most who are worth the captivating.
Anthony Wood had felt that : but with the coming
of the next generation Oxford had entered into the
prison-house of a gross material "reasonableness."
Dibdin, writing of course many years afterwards,
puts on record the impression which Oxford had
made on him and on others of his day. One hopes
that there were many whose minds were open to
the legitimate pleasures of the place, — the new-born
spirit of independence, the youthful friendships, the
visits to "the ruins of Godstow or the sacred

COLLEGE LIFE 143

•antiquity of Iffley" (no longer "Gothic and bar-
barous"),— the sense that "the future had nothing
then so entirely rapturous as the present." The
eighteenth century must have had these enthu-
siasms : but the formalism of the age hampered their
expression, or, at least, made it appear artificial.

The lack of organised amusements would make
an "early Georgian" afternoon a very uninterest-
ing affair to modern undergraduates. There were
no crews practising on the river, and no regular
games to take part in or to watch. Fives, and of
course tennis, are ancient sports : Loggan's Oxonia
Illustrata shows a game of fives going on at Merton
in 1675. Ninety years later the " Lounger " wastes
his time in the tennis-court. About the same time
the witty Dr. Warton classes tennis-courts among
the Schools of this University "where exercise is
regularly performed both morning and afternoon " :
while on Billiard Tables "the laws of motion are
exemplified." But if the attitude of Oxford rulers
to the game of kings resembled that of their
Cambridge brethren, who in or about 1720 com-
pelled certain undergraduates to make a public
recantation for having indulged in what was re-
garded as a vicious and degrading pastime, athletics
in general can hardly be said to have been
encouraged : even battledore and shuttlecock was
discouraged by Jeremy Bentham's tutor, Mr.
Jefferson: who interrupted the philosopher's pastime
" solely to stop any pleasureable excitement " — such

144 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

can be the malignity of Dons. If one is ever
moved to murmur at the tyranny of modern games
and sports, we should remember that there is
always a tendency to abuse supremacies which
have been won with toil and difficulty. Football
did not affect eighteenth century academic life.
But authority looked with grave suspicion on the
beginnings of cricket, which appears towards the
end of the century as a diversion of the idle rich,
aydXfia t^9 iroXvxpvo'ov %X.iS^<? : and the Oxonian
dignitaries of so late a period as the earlier decades
of the nineteenth century looked askance even on
the virtuous oarsman, — a person who is now re-
garded as strengthening the moral (and perhaps
even the intellectual) stamina of his University.
But the storm and stress of these violent sports
must have been of itself foreign to young gentlemen
who wore laced coats and periwigs. Again we are
in a transitional period : most Oxford men had out-
grown such simple pastimes as those wherein the
preceding age appears to have taken delight. A
Latin poem of the Restoration period depicts
academic youth Tumbling in the Hay, watching
Frogs swimming, telling Stories under a Hay-mow,
making Trimtrams with Rushes and Flowers, —
Arcadian recreations which could hardly be ex-
pected to satisfy the more mature student of the
succeeding century. " Boating, hunting, shooting,
fishing," Dibdin writes, — "these formed, in times
of yore, the chief amusements of the Oxford

COLLEGE LIFE 145

Scholar." Bentham fished and shot, but apparently
neither to his own comfort nor to the destruction of
life. Riding and attending races on Port Meadow-
were, as we have seen, the pastimes of Erasmus
Philipps, who was at Pembroke in 1720. The
wild forest country which two hundred years ago
lay adjacent to Oxford on the east and west must
have provided opportunities for shooting : the hero
of Academia, it will be remembered, goes out with
his friends on a kind of poaching expedition : some
fifty years later that stern censor morum, Dr. Newton
of Hart Hall, is very severe on sport. There is
not, he says, "a more piteous creature anywhere to
be found, than a young Scholar, who, having been
hunting and shooting for four or five months in the
country, can think of nothing but hunting and shoot-
ing from the moment he returns to his College."
As the century progressed, and enclosures began
to take the place of rough unfenced woodland,
casual wanderings over the country in search of
game must have been discouraged : and it appears
that the recreations of undergraduates began to
resemble (though not in the matter of organised
games) those of modern times. Few so far
mortified the flesh as to take a walk : but diaries
and reminiscences of the years between 1750 and
1800 are full of allusions to boating, — not as an
exercise nor as a means to the attainment of
renown, but for mere pleasure. Like the under-
graduate in Clough's poem, men
10

146 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

"Went in their life and the sunshine rejoicing, to Nuneham and
Godstow."

*' The Oxonian," a poem of 1778, gives a convenient
catalogue of indoor and outdoor sports :

" Now up the silver stream
To Medley's bowers, or Godstowe's fam'd retreat,
Straining each nerve, I urge the dancing skiff:
Or, rushing headlong down the perilous steep.
Rouse the sly Reynard from his dark abode :
Or, if inclement vapours load the sky.
Tennis awhile the heavy hours beguiles :
Or, at the billiards' fatal board, I stake
With anxious heart the last sad remnant coin."

Excursions (what the slang of the day called
schemes) to neighbouring villages on the river were
common, — such as what Mr. Philipps calls "a most
agreeable passage" to " Newnam." One of the
poets of the Oxford Sausage deplores the necessity
of assuming a grizzle-wig, the emblem of advancing
years :

" No more the wherry feels my stroke so true :
At skittles, in a Grizzle, can I play?
Woodstock, farewell ! and Wallingford, adieu !

Where many a scheme relieved the lingering day."

The Trinity undergraduate of the metrical diary
above mentioned represents himself as making
expeditions down the river in a "light-built galley"
called the Hobby- Horse :

"A game of quoits will oft our stay
A while at Sandford Inn delay :
Or rustic nine-pins : then once more
We hoist our sail, and tug the oar
To Newnham bound."

COLLEGE LIFE 147

Another letter describes how gownsmen choose
their boats,

" Skiff, gig, and cutter, or canoe,"

and then change academic garb for a more suitable
costume :

'* Each in a trice
Becomes transform'd, with trousers nice,
Jacket and catskin cap supplied
(Black gowns and trenchers chuck'd aside)" —

whereby it would appear that men went down to
the river in cap and gown, — as they still are some-
times feigned to do by the imaginative. But about
the same time, Mr. G. V. Cox records in his
Refniniscences, " boating had not yet become a
systematic pursuit in Oxford." There were six-
oared boats (no "eights") in which men used to go
to Nuneham. Mr. Cox himself belonged to a crew
who wore, as a kind of uniform, green leather caps,
with jackets and trousers of nankeen : such were
the barbaric adornments of our rude forefathers.
Perhaps, after all, the Dons who disapproved of
aquatic pastimes had some aesthetic justification.

Such and suchlike details one gleans from
eighteenth century academic literature. But youthful
satire and middle-aged reminiscence are both apt to
be tainted by convention. For a clear, real, first-
hand impression of at least one contemporary mind,
one turns rather to the pages of Hearne's diary, or
rather commonplace book ; where certainly there

148 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

is nothing of artificiality. If the personality of
eighteenth century Oxonians in general is often
rather evasive, — if "the rest are but fleeting shades,"
— Hearne at least lives : not by virtue of " litera-
ture," but simply because he chronicles his candid
opinion of the men and things that came within his
view, and records whatever happened to interest
him in his miscellaneous readings and encounters :
and a great many things interested him. Few men
can have been so inquisitive. He had the true
passion for finding out, and " when found, making
a note of" — whether or not the information acquired
could be in any way delightful or useful to himself
or to any other human being — which makes some
men antiquarians and others journalists : he himself
was compact of both. Hence his "Collections"
are the strangest miscellany. Excerpts from old
chronicles, notes on topography or numismatics,
heads of controversies between the learned on
obscure points of history or scholarship, stand
cheek by jowl with an account of the remarkable
weather of last Wednesday or Mr. So-and-so's fall
from his horse, or the very imprudent marriage
contracted by Mr. Someone else of St. Peter's
parish. We pass from scandal about the Elector
of Hanover, or gossip about the private life of
Heads of Houses, or reflections neither optimistic
nor charitable on the present state of the University,
to the interesting facts that Men did not wear
Braccae before the Flood, and that Mr. Smith of

COLLEGE LIFE 149

Iffley hath been a barber and was sixty-three years of
age last Tuesday, and that Mrs. Brown of Cat Street
is a very proud woman, and hath a Son now
Bachelor of Arts that is a debauched whiggish
young spark. Nothing is too small or too great to
be put down in that extraordinary note-book. One
has the picture of a student who was also keenly
interested in politics, whose most salient qualities
were his partisan rancour and his diligence in ac-
quiring scraps of miscellaneous learning. In both
respects Hearne was a characteristic representative
of more than one type of Oxonian. Himself very
careful and accurate ("very ugly but very in-
dustrious," is Zachary Uffenbach's character of
him, indeed few scholars have published so many
learned works in a lifetime of fifty-seven years), he
had no consideration for slipshod work : Universities
are of course always the home of the student to whom
an error of detail is as an offence against the Moral
Law. In that age of antiquarian research, Hearne
was naturally brought into contact with the work of
many recent and contemporary students, collectors
like himself of antiquities : and while he had several
intimate friends and correspondents among them —
the Rawlinsons, for instance, and Browne Willis —
there were others whom he allowed himself to
criticise with the freedom of the truly learned. He
had no great opinion even of Anthony Wood, and
willingly relates scandal about Humphrey Wanley.
But his bitterest animosity was directed against his

150 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

political opponents. In this respect, too, he is a not
unfamiliar figure to those who live in Universities :
for there is no partisan so irreconcilable as the
Gelehrte turned politician. Hearne \i2.splus royaliste
que le roi. He was a very good hater : what human
kindness he had was not at the service of Whigs or
lukewarm Tories. No one, indeed, satisfied him but
consistent Nonjurors : he never took " the detest-
able oaths " himself, and he gloats over the melan-
choly ends of some who had been faithful once, and
afterwards turned traitor. Nothing is bad enough
for such renegades.

Indeed, Hearne's political stalwartness was a
very unfortunate thing for his antiquarian studies.
From 1 70 1 he was employed as a sub-librarian in
the Bodleian, where he was completely in his
element : being, if any man ever was, born to live
among books. Had he not been a Nonjuror, with
a rooted and too often expressed hatred of all
Whigs and many Tories, his enemies would have
been fewer and his position consequently safer :
as it was, it was dangerous to be on the losing
side in the early days of George i.'s reign, and
there were many in the University who, if Hearne's
account is to be believed, were resolved to make
the library too hot to hold him. With this horrid
intention, they inveigled Hearne into accepting the
jointly held posts of *' Archetypographus " — director
of the University Press — and " Superior Beadle " :
which being done, the malignity of his enemies,

COLLEGE LIFE 151

aided by the faithlessness of his friends, discovered
that the sub - Hbrarianship could not be held
along with these offices. Hearne played the
obvious card, and resigned the Archetypographate
and Beadleship. But Hudson, the librarian, was
not to be so easily put off: he was a man of re-
source, and proceeded to curtail Hearne's privileges
by altering the locks of the library, so that the sub-
librarian's key did not fit them. This was bad
enough. But it was a more serious matter when
Hearne's tenure of the sub-librarianship was made
contingent on his taking the oath of allegiance to
the Hanoverian dynasty. This he would not do :
but neither did he intend to resign : so he resorted
to the extremely injudicious compromise of retaining
the post while ceasing to perform the duties. This
of course gave his enemies an obvious opening :
they could do no less than appoint a successor :
and the too faithful Nonjuror not only lost his office,
but was, he says, even excluded from using the
library as an ordinary student — a real tragedy for
an antiquarian. How far Hearne was the victim
of deliberate malignity, and how much he himself
contributed to the catastrophe, it is not very easy
to say. Quite possibly academic authority, fearing
in those troubled days for its own safety, was willing
enough to make a show of loyalty by dealing hardly
with a Nonjuror : but if some of the methods which
it employed were neither dignified nor straight-
forward, it appears equally certain that Hearne was

152 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

a very cantankerous man, and did nothing to
conciliate antagonism.

But even now apparently the malevolence of
Hearne's enemies was not satisfied. Martyrdom
for conscience' sake was always threatening him
in these days : he feared that he might be arrested
and (as he says) "imprisoned for life on account
of my Principles." Possibly his fears were well
grounded. At any rate, he thought it prudent to
absent himself as much as possible from Oxford, —
until this tyranny should be overpast, — and therefore
would slip out of St. Edmund Hall, where he lived,
early in the morning and walk out into the country,
picking up local antiquities en route. Hearne was
as great a walker as he was an indefatigable
researcher. One sees him about this time walking
out to Horspath and back by Iffley, reading Tully
De Natura Deorum all the while : or in later days
going farther afield, to Ditchley, or to Fairford with
its beautiful church windows, or to Aldworth in
Berkshire, where the giant crusaders of the Dela
Beche family lie sculptured in the grey church
between the downs and the woodland — full twenty
miles from Oxford. But Hearne thought little of
thirty miles or so in the day : that would be nothing
for a pedestrian who — if one can believe him — could
cover the eight miles between Dorchester and
Oxford in an hour and a quarter.

Some years later there was a further and perhaps
more real menace of molestation: for "unluckily,"

COLLEGE LIFE 153

Mr. Madan says, "the prefaces to Hearne's editions
of Camden's Elizabetha and of Giiilielmus Neubri-
gensis afforded some ground for his enemies to
allege that he had slighted the Reformation, and
thereby the Protestant character of the Church of
England " : and a prosecution was threatened. But
this danger also passed away : a change of Vice-
Chancellors brought in Dr. Shippen, who was "very
much inclined to do all possible service " to Hearne :
nor was it likely that the Chancellor (Lord Arran,
brother of Ormonde) would press matters against
an extreme Tory. Anyhow, the industrious, com-
bative little man was allowed to live peaceably (if
indeed Hearne ever lived peaceably) in St. Edmund
Hall, where he continued to receive visits from his
"Honest" friends, and in his lighter moments to
chronicle family and University scandal with his
usual acrimonious diligence: dying in 1735 with
the reputation of an eccentric scholar, "with a
singularity in his exterior Behaviour or Manner,
which was the Jest of the Man of Wit and polite
Life," but one who "secretly enjoyed the Approba-
tion, Favour, and correspondence of the Greatest
Men of the Age."

VI
DISCIPLINE

IT is probably a plain inference from the fore-
going pages that the eighteenth century
undergraduate was seldom heavily burdened by
disciplinary regulations. He was left much to
himself at the beginning of the period : those
uniform principles of College government which in
our happier age prevail throughout the University
had not yet been developed : rules were carelessly
observed and laxly enforced, and crimes condoned
or but slightly punished with which we should deal
much more severely. It was an unsatisfactory state
of things, no doubt : yet in justice to the Collegiate
authorities of that day it is fair to remember the
great difficulties with which they had to cope. In
respect of the subjects of discipline, they were con-
fronted with changed or at least changing conditions.
It has already been shown that the seventeenth
century " Man " was, in most cases, a boy in his
early teens. The rules for his government were
made for schoolboys. His amusements were
childish : his crimes, says Dr. Fowler, are often

DISCIPLINE 155

trivial and boyish — throwing snowballs in Hall
i^'' quod globulos niveos" is the criminal's con-
fession, '^ in aula projecimus") or going into the
buttery without leave. At least the punishment
register of Corpus Christi, an ample and instructive
source of information for the discipline of a hundred
and fifty years, records in the seventeenth century
very few instances of " manly " offences. But after
the Revolution the average age of undergraduates
had considerably increased. Very young boys were
no doubt still admitted : as late as 1730 a Corpus
" man " matriculated at twelve : and in fact the
variety of ages must have materially added to the
difficulty of College government : but on the whole
it is true to say that Heads and Deans were con-
fronted with the task of adapting rules made for
boys to the administration of societies of young
men. Old College regulations were inadequate to
the changed circumstances. To add to their em-
barrassments, the whole fabric of academic law and
order had been violently shaken by the storms of
the Civil War period, and the succeeding licence of
the Restoration : and during the reigns of Charles 11.
and James 11. at least (for it is to be noticed that
Stephen Penton in the Guardians Instruction
speaks well of academic discipline in 1688)
Colleges must often have been a kind of Bohemia,
where the scholar might follow his amusements,
disreputable or otherwise, with as little check or
hindrance as the student of the Quartier Latin.

156 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Such was the inheritance of the eighteenth from
the preceding century : if its performance was not
distinguished, justice demands that we should take
into account the severity of its handicap. Further,
some of the grosser forms of vice which the early
Georgians failed to visit with what we should con-
sider sufficient rigour, were discreditable rather to
society at large than to the Universities in par-
ticular. They seem heinous to us : but they are
not necessarily condemned by contemporary public
opinion. No candid critic can altogether deny the
charges of laxity and indifference, and an apparent
inability to distinguish between various kinds of
crimes. The law of England which inflicted capital
punishment for homicide and petty larceny was not
more comprehensive in its operation than the dis-
ciplinary system of a College where every offence is
apparently punished by "crossing" (being con-
victu privatus) for periods varying from a week to
a month. The man who (with a singular modern-
ness) pleads a sick relation, "instead of which" he
goes to London, is "crossed" for a fortnight. Ben.
Wilding suffers the same punishment for a week, as
a penalty for making a noise in the quadrangle,
assailing the Dean maledictis et contumeliis, and
not hesitating to bandy words — inepte garrire —
with the President himself. A like fate awaits
William Nicholas, for spending the night out and
causing riot and disorder in the streets. " Notice,"
says Dr. Fowler, " the extraordinary leniency of the

DISCIPLINE 157

punishment for this offence, which would now un-
doubtedly be met by rustication for two or more
terms." It is still more surprising when deprivation
of commons (with, it is true, a declamation in Hall
thrown in) is regarded as an adequate penalty for
homicide — even on the charitable and perhaps
necessary assumption that the crime was only
attempted. Drunkenness — even in Chapel — and
gross immorality are similarly visited, — sometimes
with the additional sentence of a public apology.
When every allowance has been made, — when it
has been allowed that expulsion was difficult, that
" rustication " was rare (though not unheard of : a
Christ Church man was rusticated about 1770), and
that society in general condoned the grosser forms
of vice, — one is struck on the whole by the indul-
gence shown to offenders. The rusticated Christ
Church undergraduate above-mentioned had been
guilty of a crime so gross, according to the historian
of the House, as to deserve expulsion. The nature
of the offence is left to the reader's imagination :
but if the punishment is to be regarded as inade-
quate, it must have been heinous indeed. In
addition to his temporary banishment the unhappy
man was condemned to an imposition of almost
incredible vastness. He was ordered, says Mr.
Thompson, to abridge the whole of Herodotus : to
draw out " schemes and enunciations," and to master
Euclid, books 5, 6, 11, 12 : to write down and work
all the examples in M'Laurin's Algebra, Part i. : to

158 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

make notes on all St. Paul's Epistles, and a careful
diary of the hundred last Psalms in Hebrew : and
to translate into Latin both parts of the ninth dis-
course of the second volume of Sherlock's Sermons.
Whatever the lot of the virtuous man under the
rule of Dean Markham, the criminal at least had
every incentive to a lifetime of industry.

But if eighteenth century punishments were in
general reprehensibly light, it does not follow that
we are entitled to throw any stones at the authorities
who inflicted them. We owe our predecessors
too much for that. Heirs as we are of their
disciplinary rules, we cannot shut our eyes to the
patent fact that the eighteenth century found
Oxford turbulent and anarchic, and left it law-
abiding — not perhaps intellectually energetic, but
peaceful and fairly well-governed. The disorders
of the time were many, but the champions of good
government were not few. Something was done
to this end in the early years of the century, when
the misbehaviour of undergraduates was outrunning
even the very tolerant ideas of the time : and later
on, in the years which mark, it is true, the grossest
intellectual darkness of the period, came the
generation of Dr. Newton and Dr. Conybeare,
sturdy old formalists with at least very sound prin-
ciples of external decorum, — men who did certainly
try to introduce decency and good order into
societies which stood sorely in need of reformation.
One begins to hear of minor matters like com-

DISCIPLINE 159

pulsory attendance at Chapel services. " We have
a company," says the undergraduate in Miller's
Humours of Oxford, " of formal old surly Fellows
who take pleasure in making one act contrary to
one's conscience — and tho' for their own parts they
never see the inside of a Chappel throughout the
year, yet if one of us miss but two mornings in the
week, they'll set one a plaguy Greek imposition to
do." Conybeare was successively Rector of Exeter
and Dean of Christ Church (sent to the latter
foundation with the reputation of a reformer " to
cleanse that Augean stable"), precisely the two
Colleges which at the beginning of the century had
the name of being "the most dissolute in Oxford."
"He makes a great stir in the College" (Christ
Church), Hearne writes in 1733, "at present pre-
tending to great matters, such as locking up the
gates at 9 o'clock at night, having the keys brought
up to him, turning out young women from being
bedmakers," having an ambition "even to exceed
that truly great man Bishop Fell, to whom he is
not in the least to be compared," — naturally, being
a Whig. Similarly, Dr. Newton's scheme for the
better government of Hart Hall includes the
shutting of the College gates at nine, and placing
of the key with the Principal : and the Visitor's
Injunctions prescribe a like observance at Merton
in 1737. These are small and trivial matters : but
the fact that they are chronicled at all shows that
considerable laxity had prevailed : and of course it

i6o OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

did not cease at once. Some fifteen years after
Dr. Newton, the "Lounger" stays out of his
College till one : nor does it appear that the
irregularity of the evening is avenged by the
matutinal Dean. As time went on, the general
rules of College discipline became stereotyped
under men like Dr. Randolph of Corpus Christi
and " the Great " Cyril Jackson of Christ Church :
it is from the later years of the eighteenth century
that we have inherited the traditions of law and
order which — necessarily modified with the changes
of later social life — have on the whole subsisted
into the twentieth.

For the Newtons and the Conybeares variety
of age among their pupils must have been one of
the principal cruces of the disciplinarian. This
would be less felt by their immediate successors :
but the Randolphs and the Jacksons had to deal
with the still more embarrassing problem (due, it
is true, to a system which they themselves en-
couraged or perpetuated) of variety of social status.
" There were great difficulties," says Mr. Words-
worth, "arising from the social condition of the
members of the Universities." Both Oxford and
Cambridge deliberately emphasised those class
distinctions to which they have never — at least in
the past two hundred years — been insensible : and
it must have been very difficult to frame disciplinary
rules which could be impartially enforced on " noble-
men " and gentlemen-commoners on the one hand.

DISCIPLINE i6i

and servitors on the other. When Philalethes
writes in 1790 that "in several Colleges, the heirs
of the first families in the kingdom submit to the
same exercises, and the same severity of discipline,
with the lowest member of the society," the tone
and diction of his statement are sufficient indication
that the spirit of Hugby and Crump was already
prevailing in the councils of Colleges.

It was the gentleman-commoner who was the
problem — a problem, it must be admitted, not
satisfactorily solved. Towards the end of the
century he appears full-blown, in all his splendour
and with all his immunities, — a grave scandal to a
writer in the Gentleman s Magazine for 1798; "a
spirit of expensive rivalship," he says, "has long
been kept up by purse-proud nabobs, merchants,
and citizens, against the nobility and gentry of the
kingdom. Universities may rue the contagion.
They were soon irrecoverably infected. In them
extraordinary largesses began to purchase im-
munities : the indolence of the opulent was sure of
absolution : and the emulation of literature was
gradually superseded by the emulation of profligate
extravagance : till a third order of pupils appeared "
(besides, that is, commoners and servitors): "a
pert and pampered race, too froward for controul,
too headlong for persuasion, too independent for
chastisement : privileged prodigals. These are
the gentlemen-commoners of Oxford, and the fellow-
commoners of Cambridge. They are perfectly their
II

1^2 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

own masters, and they take the lead in every dis-
graceful frolic of juvenile debauchery. They are
curiously tricked out in cloth of gold, of silver, and
of purple, and feast most sumptuously throughout
the year : ,, „

J " P ruges consumere nati,

Sponsi Penelopes, nebulones, Alcinoique
In cute curanda plus aequo operata juventus."

These gilded youths, the writer complains, can
evade all their academic duties by the payment of
trifling fines: "a gentleman-commoner pays for
neglecting matins or vespers, 2d. each time : the
hours of closing gates, 3d. : lectures, 4d. : meals in
hall, IS. : St. Mary's on Sunday, if detected, is."
These "paltry mulcts" are obviously quite in-
effectual : it is clearly worth a rich man's while to
purchase absolute liberty at the price of about
13s. a week.

The nineteenth century — which abolished noble-
men and gentlemen-commoners and servitors, made
all men at least nominally equal before the law, and
witnessed the growth of a sound public opinion in
and outside of Colleges — has infinitely simplified
the problems of College discipline for the twentieth.
The development of the "public school spirit"
makes for due subordination and obedience.
Undergraduates in a College are no longer a
miscellaneous aggregate of casually assorted in-
dividuals, but members of a corporate whole with
traditions, usually healthy ones, to maintain : and
if it is undeniably true that corporate unity

DISCIPLINE 163

cemented by athletic triumphs has its own com-
plications for the Dean, it is obviously easier to
apply existing rules to a comparatively homo-
geneous crowd than to frame new ones to suit
the individual instance.

History is not very full on the Proctorial ex-
ercise of authority. The scenes among which
Proctors moved were less turbulent than in the
Tudor days when they carried poleaxes : indeed,
when the state of manners is considered, Oxford
streets must be considered to have been remarkably
peaceful. Politics, as will be seen, did occasionally
create difficult and even dangerous situations : but
on the whole the main business of the Proctor was
dealing with minor irregularities, such as the fre-
quenting of taverns and coffee-houses. These were
" drawn " as nowadays.

" Nor Proctor thrice " (so sings the panegyrist of
Oxford Ale)

" with vocal heel alarms
Our joys secure, nor deigns the lowly roof
Of Pothouse snug to visit : wiser he
The splendid tavern haunts, or Coffee-house
Of James or Juggins."

The "Oxonian" of 1778 is gated or set an im-
position : the Proctor detects him in some crime
or peccadillo,

"And then, with mandate stern, to College dooms
Me, hapless wight, with dreadful fines amers'd,
Till one long moon revolves her tedious round :
Some godly author, Tillotson perchance,
Or moral bard to conn, with heart full sad."

1 64 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

It appears that the Vice - Chancellor himself
occasionally "walked," — at least in Hearne's day, —
and even "drew" a tavern in which he found
the Proctors! One is reminded of a Homeric
Theomachy.

Then, as now. Proctors were concerned largely
with enforcing due observance of rules relating to
academical dress — and whatever its negligence in
other matters, the University towards the end of
the century was precise and rigorous in this respect.
Indeed it appears that individual licence stood in
need of regulation. Academical dress (like all
others) progresses from variety to uniformity, and
from amplitude to comparative scantiness. The
Laudian Statutes, for instance, enjoin a diversity
of headgear quite unknown to the dull monotony
of moderns : and the Laudian Statutes as to dress
remained in force till 1770. Just a hundred years
before that, Loggan's "fashion plates" abundantly
illustrate the academic habit of the day. Accord-
ing to these, all undergraduates on the foundation
of Colleges and all graduates except Doctors of
Law, Medicine, and Music, wear square trencher
caps like our own, but in the case of undergraduates
without the tuft or "apex," which has now become
a tassel. Commoners and servitors have a round
cap with a limp crown : the same kind of headgear,
but with a higher crown and more elaborately
pleated, is worn by Doctors of Law, Medicine, and
Music, also by "noblemen" — peers or peers' sons.

DISCIPLINE 165

or what are called nobiles minorum gentium, that
is, Baronets or Knights. The " nobleman's " gown
varies in adornment according to his rank, and may-
be of any colour that pleases him (at Cambridge,
always more licentious than Oxford in the matter
of colour, Lord Fitzwilliam when a Fellow-
Commoner of Trinity Hall in 1764 wore a pink
gown laden with gold lace) : all other gowns were
black, and in general much more ample than modern
custom prescribes. In 1675 at any rate, and prob-
ably for some time subsequently, all were talares
in compliance with the Statute, — reaching, that is,
to the ankles, — and even trailing on the ground
in the case of some graduates. From the rude
indication given by the illustration of the Oxfo7^d
Sausage, one infers that the undergraduate gown
of 1760 was more in keeping with the regulations
than the present ridiculous fragment which hangs
from the commoner's back : but the accuracy of
illustrators is not always to be trusted. In 1675
and 1760 all alike, graduate and undergraduate,
wear bands : in 1778 a "flowing band, that saintly
ornament," is still de rzgueur : the white tie worn
by candidates in the schools appears to be its
modern representative.

The wearing of academical dress was much
more stringently enforced in the eighteenth century
than at present. Nor was this all : both at Oxford
and Cambridge authority undertook to prescribe
the cut and colour of coats: and as in 1633 so

1 66 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

in 1793, the "absurd and extravagant habit of
wearing boots " (absurdus ille et fastuosus publice
in ocreis ambulandi mos) was sternly forbidden :

" But the whole set, pray understand,
Must walk full dress'd in cap and band.
For should grave Proctor chance to meet
A buck in boots along the street,
He stops his course, and with permission
Asking his name, sets imposition,"

according to the author of the Trinity letters
above mentioned. From the same source it is
to be gathered that men even went down to the
river in cap and gown, and changed, as we should
say, in the barge. According as the academic
habit was more constantly worn, so much the more
was it of course liable to mutations of fashion : and
probably the licence of a notoriously "dressy" age
tended to introduce unwarranted innovations. At
any rate in 1770 fresh legislation appears to have
become necessary.

The revised statutes of this year (besides ex-
tending the use of the square cap and "apex" to
all undergraduates except servitors, and shortening
the sleeves of scholars to something like their
present length) emphasises the distinctions of rank
and status with great care : and when it is re-
membered that one of the arguments for the
expulsion of the Methodists from St. Edmund Hall
in 1 768 was that they were persons of low degree
and therefore unfit to associate with gentlemen,
one may conclude that the University had entered

DISCIPLINE 167

with zest on that practice of "honeying to the

whisper of a lord," from which even democratic

ages have not always been free. Peers and peers'

sons were to wear gowns not necessarily black,

ornamented with gold lace, and gilded "tufts":

Baronets the same, except that their gowns must

be black : gentlemen-commoners, silk gowns and

velvet caps : servitors were to show their inferiority

by lacking the " apex."

" In silk, gay Lords the streets parade,
Gold tassels nodding over head,"

writes the Trinity undergraduate of 1792 : noble-
men had already worn gilt tufts in 1738, though
not actually enjoined to do so by law. These
barbaric puerilities did not definitely disappear till
1870, — one hopes for ever. But while they are
at present in abeyance, it is never safe to trust
the reverential instincts of the English middle
class.

VII
EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS

IT is difficult to find exact parallels for the modern
system under which our oldest Universities are
governed. It is in a sense purely democratic : the
legislative body is not merely representative, but is
in theory, as in the republics of Athens and Rome,
the whole mass of qualified voters. All proposals
are submitted in Oxford to Congregation first, —
that is, to the Doctors and Masters of Arts resident
within a mile and a half of Carfax, — and if approved
by that body have still to come before the larger
constituency called Convocation, which includes all
Doctors and Masters, in whatever part of the globe,
whose names still remain on their College books.
It is of course but seldom that non-residents exercise
the franchise. Most subjects of academic delibera-
tion interest them but little : on the rare occasions
when the rural or metropolitan voter is invited by
ardent partisans to come up in his thousands and
decide some great issue, — such as the question of
admitting laymen to serve as examiners in Theology,
— champions of the vanquished cause have been

i68

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 169

heard to murmur at his interference, and to compare
the decisions of a perfect democracy possessing the
franchise on a theoretically intellectual basis to the
obstructive methods of an unpopular House of
Lords.

But while a democracy legislates, the initiative,
till very lately, rested with an oligarchy. No
measure could be proposed to Congregation unless
sanctioned by the Hebdomadal Council, a senate
of some twenty members elected in such a way as
to represent the three estates of Professors, Heads
of Houses, and ordinary Masters of Arts. Council
deliberates : Congregation and Convocation pass
laws. Thus we preserved something like the relation
between the Boule and Ecclesia of Athens, or the
Senate and People of Rome.

This system dates, in its details, from the
Commission of 1852. Before that epoch the
Hebdomadal Council was not as now a body
elected by the University, but consisted simply of
the Heads of Houses. Nothing is more signifi-
cant of the absolute identification of the University
with its Colleges. Certain University and College
functionaries, in addition to the "Regent Masters"
(Masters of Arts of less than a year's standing),
composed what was then known as Congregation :
and the memory of them survives in what we now
call the " Ancient House of Congregation," which,
inter alia, confers degrees. Other resident M.A.'s
had no special status : they were not differentiated

17 o OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

as to their legislative duties from non-resident : and
in fact in the eighteenth century it cannot have been
necessary to emphasise the distinction between
resident and extraneous Masters, the intervention
of the latter in those days of slower communication
being difficult or impossible. Then, as was the case
till lately, legislation was initiated by Council, and
ratified by the body of Masters of Arts. These
latter were not indeed always allowed to exercise
their full share of government. Hearne complains
that the University is ruled, not as it should be by
the whole body of Masters, nor even by the collec-
tive wisdom of all the Heads of Houses, but by
clandestine meetings of the Vice-Chancellor and
Doctors : for whom "it is usual to act as they think
fit, though sometimes they are thwarted by the
Masters." The action of such a Vehmgericht is of
course unconstitutional, and also (says Hearne)
disastrous in its results : for although the Masters
may be comparatively young and imprudent, they
are more likely to give an honest and disinterested
vote than Doctors, " who are swayed oftentimes by
the Preferments they expect, such as Bishopricks,
Deaneries, Prebends, etc." Mere M.A.'s "have
innocency as yet," and the best elections (note that
elections are all the University business in 17 18)
are those which have been carried by them. But
"the Heads of Houses," protests a writer in 1722,
"have nothing so much at heart as to defeat the
Power of the Masters."

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 171

The qualification for Mastership was, as now,
membership of an academic society during a certain
period, payment of dues,andperformance of exercises.

It may be doubted whether moderns retain that
whole-hearted belief in the educational efficacy and
saving grace of examinations which certainly pre-
vailed thirty years ago. Then, they were the
supreme and final test of merit and the only real
guide of study : and society was to be regenerated
by them. There may be some who would still
maintain that these optimistic expectations have
been realised. We have not quite lost our illusions.
But all good things have their questionable side :
a system, which at first was a useful servant, has
now become a rather tyrannous master : probably
most teachers in Universities at least regard
examinations as something of a necessary evil :
even society in general has begun to suspect that
there may be other means of selection for the public
service. Perhaps it is a sign of improved ideals
that the man who aims at a First Class for itself
(that hero of the early and middle Victorian age) is
now regarded as a rather vulgar and unsatisfactory
person, and that, in the opinion of most, examina-
tion is no better than a wolf held by the ears : there
are inconveniences in retaining hold of the ravenous
beast, but still graver inconveniences might result
from letting it go.

Nevertheless, though the first rapture of en-
thusiasm be past, there is no sign as yet of careless-

172 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

ness or half-heartedness in the working of the
machine. We still regard the setting and answering
and marking of " Papers " as part of the serious
business of life, and approach these high matters in
a properly serious spirit, — as indeed is only right,
since we are dealing with what, after all, is still
(as Greek used to be) a highroad to positions of
emolument. The system may be good or bad : it
is probably a little of both : but at any rate pains
are taken to make our examinations as real tests as
possible of sound knowledge : and one of the cruces
which confront persons connected with University
education is the meritorious endeavour to increase
the burden of "The Schools" by bringing their
tests into close relation with all the latest dis-
coveries,— a relation which is appreciated by the
serious student, but which the friends of the
average man regard as generally unpalatable and
always unnecessary.

But Oxford in the earlier part of the eighteenth
century was troubled by no such problems.
Academic examinations had few points of contact
with academic studies : and if study without examin-
ation is not always fully profitable to the ordinary
man, much less profitable is examination without
study.

Had the Laudian Statutes been obeyed in the
spirit as they were in the letter, there would have
been little room for detraction. According to their
provisions, the student was bound to perform a

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 173

succession of exercises for the Bachelor's decree
which should have tested the continuous steps of
progress with sufficient thoroughness : and finally
to pass an examination which, according to the best
ideas of the period, was comprehensive enough.
Three public appearances correspond roughly to
our own " Smalls," ** Mods.," and " Greats " : in the
first place, what was technically called " Disputa-
tiones in Parviso," and popularly known as
" Generals," or " Juraments " ; next, an intermediate
test, "answering under bachelor," with a B.A. as
" Moderator " (the name of which, as also its place
in the undergraduate's academic career, is recalled
by our '* Moderations," established by the Com-
mission of 1852); lastly, the examination for the
degree. The subjects of this were supposed to be
(to quote Mr. Wordsworth's list) grammar, rhetoric,
logic, ethics, geometry, Greek classics, fluency in
the Latin tongue. These various stages of ex-
amination, it will be observed, were purely ** pass "
tests. There was no division of "Pass" and
" Class," no opportunity for distinction. When
Mr. Wordsworth points out, with the justifiable
complacency of a member of a more virtuous
University, that during the eighteenth century
Oxford had no honour examinations, Oxonians can
but blush in silence and admit that the fact is so.

Critics in the Press and elsewhere have been
known to comment with some severity on the
modern qualification for Masters of Arts. These,

174 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

as is well known, obtain their coveted distinction
— once they have taken their Bachelor's degree —
simply by keeping their names for a certain number
of terms on the books of their Colleges, and
paying certain dues and fees : a system which it is
difficult to defend in a manner entirely satisfactory
to external critics. Indeed it is not so very long
since Cambridge extended this latitude even to her
would-be Bachelors, and granted the B.A. degree
to some of her alumni, who, while their natural
modesty shrank from a public display of intellectual
gifts, yet proved their loyalty to a home of learning
by paying academic dues during a period of ten
years. Neither University can boast that its
present practice is more respectable than the
theoretical requirements of the Laudian Statutes.
During the eighteenth century the B.A. degree
was not, as now, the seal and stamp of a completed
education : it was only the preliminary to a course
of studies and examinations ultimately qualifying
for Mastership. With us the B.A. is relatively
hard, and the M.A. easy to obtain : in the
eighteenth century the period of really difficult and
serious study began — in theory — after the Bachelor's
degree had been taken. The candidate for Master-
ship must reside : only, it is true, for one term in
the year — so far had the law of constant residence
been relaxed : but then we do not insist even on
that. As for the undergraduate, so for the Bachelor,
there was an imposing succession of disputations

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 175

and viva voce exercises to be performed, as pre-
liminaries to a regular examination. He must
"determine" by taking his part in two Lenten
disputations on grammar, rhetoric, ethics, politics,
or logic. Once, at least, he must dispute "apud
Augustinenses " — or according to the slang phrase
"do Austins." Then there were " disputationes
quodlibeticae," wherein the candidate apparently-
held himself ready to answer all comers on any
question: "sex solennes lectiones"in natural and
moral philosophy, intended to stimulate research :
two declamations to be delivered before a Proctor,
intended (says Mr. Wordsworth) as exercises in
polite learning and elegant composition. Due
attention having thus been paid to matter and form,
style, erudition, and readiness in argument, the
candidate was confronted with a final examination,
which left nothing to be desired in compre-
hensiveness. Its subjects were supposed to be
geometry, natural philosophy, astronomy, meta-
physics, history, Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. Yet
Universities are reproached for the narrowness of
their sphere of study !

Unfortunately, this alarming array of obstacles
to the aspirant had degenerated into a series of
meaningless formalities. "Juraments" were con-
stantly neglected. The examination for the B.A.
degree was, towards the end of the century, held in
private, and candidates chose their own examiners :
"who never fail," says Terrce Films in the earlier

176 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

part of the century, "to be their old cronies and
toping companions." When all allowance is made
for the Whig animus of Nicholas Amherst, for
whom any stick is good enough to beat his Tory
Dons, the picture which he draws of contempor-
ary examinations and disputations is sufficiently
depressing. Disputation for the Bachelor's degree
"is no more than a formal repetition of a set of
syllogisms upon some ridiculous question in logick,
which they get by rote, or perhaps only read out of
their caps, which lie before them with their notes
in them. These commodious sets of syllogisms are
called ' Strings,' and descend from undergraduate
to undergraduate in a regular succession." "The
first exercise necessary for a degree " (says a writer
in the Gentlemafis Magazine for 1780) "is the
holding a disputation in the Public Schools on some
question of Logic or Moral Philosophy. It is termed
in the phrase of the University doing generals.
. . . Every undergraduate in the University, if
brought to confession, has in his possession certain
papers which have been handed down from
generation to generation, and are denominated
strings. . . . These strings consist of two or three
arguments, each on those subjects which are dis-
cussed in the schools, fairly transcribed in that
syllogistical form which alone is admitted on this
occasion. The two disputants having procured a
sufficient number of them, and learned to repeat
them by heart, proceed with confidence to the place

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 177

appointed. From one o'clock till three they must
remain seated opposite to each other, entertaining
themselves as well as so ridiculous a situation will
admit : and if any Proctor should come in, who is
appointed to preside over these exercises, they
begin to rehearse what they have learned, frequently
without the least knowledge of what is meant. . . .
I have subjoined a translation of one of these
arguments.

Opponent. What think you of this question,
whether universal ideas are formed by abstraction ?

Respondent. I affirm it.

0pp. Universal ideas are not formed by
abstraction : therefore you are deceived.

Resp. I deny the antecedent.

0pp. I prove the antecedent. Whatever is
formed by sensation alone is not formed by abstrac-
tion : but universal ideas are formed by sensation
alone : therefore universal ideas are not formed by
abstraction.

Resp. I deny the minor.

0pp. I prove the minor. The idea of solidity
is an universal idea : but the idea of solidity is
formed by sensation alone : therefore universal
ideas are formed by sensation alone.

Resp. I deny the major.

0pp. I prove the major. The idea of solidity
arises from the collision of two solid bodies : there-
fore the idea of solidity is formed by sensation

alone.
12

178 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Resp. The idea of solidity, I confess, is formed
by sensation : but the mind can consider it as
abstracted from sensation."

The "sex solennes lectiones " were called " Wall
lectures," being delivered pro forma to the bare
walls of an empty room. The "Collectors" who
arrange the preliminaries for Determination were,
according to Amherst, systematically venal ; " every
determiner that can afford it values himself upon
presenting one of the Collectors with a broad piece,
or half a broad : and Mr. Collector in return
entertains his benefactors with a good supper and
as much wine as they can drink, besides 'gracious
days ' " (when the candidate would be detained
for the shortest possible time) "and commodious
schools. . . . This, to me, seems the great business
of determination : to pay money, and to get drunk."
Hearne, writing in 1727, says that young Mr.
Dodwell of Magdalen had bribed the " Collector "
at his " Determination " to get him a gracious day,
"that he might be up at disputing the less time " :
an act which Hearne says Dodwell's father would
have detested. But then Dodwell the elder was
a Nonjuror, while his son was not. Vicesimus
Knox (a St. John's man like Amherst), who took
his M.A. degree in 1753, draws a similar picture
towards the close of the century. Examinations
for the B.A. degree were almost social functions,
held not, as now, at fixed times, but so as to suit
the convenience of the individual candidate and

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 179

the examiners whom he chose. " The examiners
and the candidate often converse on the last drink-
ing bout or on horses, or read the newspaper or a
novel, or divert themselves as well as they can in
any manner till the clock strikes eleven, when all
parties descend and the testimonium is signed by
the masters." Knox, too, lays stress on the regular
use at all examinations and exercises of traditional
forms of argument : whether the candidate is con-
fronted with "Generals," "Austins,"or "Quodlibets,"
every obstacle is surmounted by the help of " foolish
syllogisms on foolish subjects," " handed down
from generation to generation on long slips of
paper." John Scott (Lord Eldon) took his B.A.
degree in 1770, after an examination in Hebrew
and history : he is said to have been asked two
questions only — " What is the Hebrew for the
place of a skulP." and "Who founded University
College ? " The story is related by Cambridge
men and disbelieved (as Mr. Wordsworth confesses)
by Oxonians : but whether true or false, it is not
a priori improbable, and Oxford need not strain at
a mere gnat like this. " The exercises for the
M.A. degree," says Dr. Macray in his edition of
the Magdalen College Register, "were copies of
common forms." The fact is allowed: it is un-
necessary to pursue the uninviting business of
multiplying evidence : exem-pla non sunt multi-
plicanda prceter necessitatem. Except for Terrce
Filius, no serious protest seems to have been made

i8o OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

until the academic conscience began to stir a little
towards the end of the century. In 1773 the author
of a pamphlet entitled Considerations on the Public
Exercises for the First and Second Degrees in the
University of Oxford (Mr. Napleton of Brasenose
College) recommended that the various examina-
tions should be made real and genuinely public, and
that a virtual division between " Pass " and " Class "
should be established ; or rather, that there should
be three classes, the third composed of those who
"satisfied the examiners" but were not distin-
guished. "Austins" and " Quodlibets " were to
be abolished. There was to be only one (annual
or terminal) examination : which would save much
trouble, as it would lead to the conferring of many
degrees at the same time : whereas under the old
system Congregation had to meet for this purpose
perhaps sixty times a year. The proposal was a
sign of the times. But no reform was actually
attempted till the closing years of the century,
when Dr. Cyril Jackson of Christ Church, Dr.
Parsons of Balliol, and Dr. Eveleigh of Oriel
succeeded in passing the " New Examination
Statute," which was the parent of our present ex-
amination system. Under it, all examinations were
to be held in public and at fixed times, and con-
ducted by persons chosen by the University, no
longer the candidate's own friends. The old
examination for the B.A. degree remained, with
thus modified conditions : but it was supplemented

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS i8i

by an "extraordinary examination," giving an
opportunity to persons who wished for distinction,
honour-men, in fact. Thus something like the
modern Literae Humaniores School came into
existence : honour-men were definitely differentiated
from passmen. The credit of this belongs to the
eighteenth century : the legislation of 1 800 was
the parent of successive statutes respecting the
final examination and " Responsions in the Parvis,"
which appears now to supersede the old Generals
and Juraments : the Bachelor continued to "deter-
mine," but " Quodlibets " and " Austins" apparently
ceased to exist. At the same time, logically
enough, an attempt was made to *' realise " the
examination for the M.A. degree. This, however,
was never a serious ordeal, and only survived for
six years: the examination statute of 1808, one of
the many in the early century, superseded it.
Daniel Wilson of St. Edmund Hall, afterwards
Bishop of Calcutta, devoted three days to direct
preparation for it : offered Thucydides and Hero-
dotus in Greek, and all the best Latin authors :
and obtained the highest honours. Evidently
specialism had not said its last word in 1802.

The prescribed subjects for the Laudian examina-
tions look imposing on paper : but the interpreta-
tion put upon them made the examinations entirely
undeserving of serious observance : the century
which neglected them or treated them perfunctorily
has at least that justification. In spite of the New

1 82 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Learning of the Renaissance, the old influence of
the Schoolmen was still strongly felt at Oxford :
and academic conservatism as well as religious
orthodoxy did its best to deprive Oxford Schools
of value and interest by refusing to admit the study
of recent philosophy. Cambridge at the same
period, as is shown by the list of prescribed
philosophical works, was far more liberal. But
Oxford succeeded in making her examinations
null and void : and the keenest students were
precisely those who were least likely to take such
businesses seriously. If reform was never at-
tempted till late in the century, it was partly the
same spirit of conservatism which was responsible :
"altering the least Statute," says a writer in 1709,
speaking of a different matter, " is striking at the
whole foundation " : and further, it must be remem-
bered that as the turbulence of the Civil Wars
and the licence of the post- Restoration period had
seriously interrupted all academic exercises, it was
as much as reformers could do to restore the due
form and ceremonial, without, for the time, troubling
themselves to remodel the subjects of examination.
One is inclined to say of these ancient and
happily obsolete "Quodlibets" and "Austins" and
" Determinations " Non ragioniam di lor, ma
guarda e passa. Yet before passing to less de-
pressing topics, we are confronted with the fact
that in spite of the perfunctory nature of the
preliminary ordeals, candidates did nevertheless

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 183

fail to obtain their degrees : and the grounds of
rejection may help a little to the understanding of the
attitude of the University towards its examinations.
Theoretically, at the present day, Congregation
grants every degree on the merits of the candidate :
a due statement of his claim is made, the formal
sanction of his College produced, and the House
is then free to give or refuse the degree. It is all
theory : no one is ever refused now. But at least
in the earlier part of the eighteenth century,
Congregation frequently exercised its right of
granting or withholding : candidates, at least for
the M.A. degree, were constantly rejected. The
ground of rejection had seldom anything to do
with intellectual achievement. More often the
reasons were moral or political : it was alleged
that the candidate was a loose liver, or that he was
a dangerous freethinker and read English philo-
sophy, or that he was unsound on Occasional
Conformity. When the M.A. degree is refused
to the applicant whom Hearne rather surprisingly
calls ** Wilkins, a Prussian," — on the ground of his
being a Hanoverian, a spy, and in short a Whig, —
this is probably a case of application for a degree
honoris causa, or "by diploma": and so in 1728
the degree by diploma of " Dr. of Physick " was
only conferred on Dr. Fullerton, a Nonjuror, after
much opposition. Degrees were useful things,
and the University was constantly receiving letters
of more or less authority recommending such an

1 84 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

one to its favour. But it is the ordinary degree
which is in question when we read that Mr. Covert
of Hart Hall, who had already been refused his
Bachelor of Arts degree "for a great crime," stood
again and was again rejected because (as alleged)
" I. He had not done Juraments. 2. He had not
been resident ever since his Denyal in ye University.
3. He said if he had" — well, broken the Moral
Law — "as others in ye University do he should
not have been deny'd his Degree." The third
reason "was principally insisted on and was
approved as sufficient''-, in spite of which Mr.
Covert "got two Parsonages." Again, it is the
ordinary degree about which there was a great
controversy in the case of Mr. Littleton, a Fellow
of All Souls', who was accused of having defended
" that wicked book call'd The Rights of ye Christian
Church'' : but Hearne says that the opposition was
really due to "a partial Design of pleasing and
caressing the Warden of All Souls', Dr. Gardiner,
between whom and divers of the Fellows of
that College there is great Enmity." Without
multiplying instances, it is sufficiently clear that
degrees were granted or refused for reasons wholly
unconnected with intellectual performance. We
have come to regard a degree as the reward of
proficiency (of a kind) in passing examinations.
But the University of Oxford in the eighteenth
century must not have the same standards applied
to it as we should rightly apply to the University

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 185

of London in the twentieth. The University
which gave to its Proctors the stipend of the
Professor of Moral Philosophy may be said to
press the theory that "conduct is three parts of
life " to an unjustifiable extreme : nevertheless an
advocatus diaboli might plead that the point of
view is intelligible, though perhaps not one that
can be fully appreciated by us. We hold that
degrees follow examinations, — or some display of
intellectual qualifications, — and that examinations
are the true tests of study : but the men of the
eighteenth century held that Colleges being ex
hypothesi places of study (a convention which even
a cynical age did not call in question), certified
residence in a College implied study on the part
of the recipient of a College certificate. Thus the
formal "grace" which the College granted to its
candidate guaranteed that he was intellectually
competent. But a University is bound to consider
not only the intellectual ability but the moral
conduct of its alumni, as fitting them for the due
service of Church and State : and therefore might
and did refuse its degrees to the Methodist, or the
political opponent, or the man who read Locke.
The prejudices of the age were remarkable : seldom
has partisanship been more bitter and real liberality
of thought rarer : yet these things must be taken
as we find them. Mere academic exercises, being
superfluous as a test of intellectual and no test at
all of moral or political fitness, could be and were

1 86 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

regarded as simple survivals, which conservatism
retained, but which even conservatism held to be
meaningless. They must b'^ retained, because all
innovation was dangerous : but no one need care
how perfunctorily they were performed.

The great occasion for conferring higher degrees
(Doctors' and Masters') at the beginning of the
eighteenth century was still the celebrated " Act,"
taking place in July, and corresponding to the
Cambridge " Commencement." It was a time of
much solemn formality and many disputations : the
" Inceptors " — that is. Bachelors proceeding to the
degree of Doctor or Master — disputed according
to their kind in philosophy, divinity, law, or physic :
in the Faculty of Arts, for which the Sheldonian
Theatre was reserved, "the Senior Proctor opposes
on all the Questions, and confirms an argument on
the First : then the Pro- Proctor and Terrae Filius
dispute on the Second : and lastly, the Junior
Proctor on the Third Question : and all the
Inceptors are obliged to attend these Disputations
from the Beginning to the End, under the Pain
of 3s. 4d. At the equal expense of all the Inceptors,
there is a sumptuous and elegant Supper at the
College or Hall of the Senior of each Faculty, for
the Entertainment of the Doctors, called the Act-
Supper." All this takes place on a Saturday, and
the above-mentioned exercises are called Vespers.
On Monday, the various personages concerned
repair to the Theatre, where " Comitial Exercises "

H <

^ 2

Q ?

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 187

are performed, very much as on the Saturday :
Proctors and TerrcB Filius playing the same part as
two days before. Then "if there be any person
taking a Musick degree, he is to perform a Song
of Six or Eight Parts on Vocal and Instrumental
Musick, and then he shall have his creation from
the Savilian Professors, etc." (the Savilian Professor
of Astronomy, in virtue of his presumed acquaintance
with the music of the spheres, is still one of the
electors to the Professorship of Music) : then
Doctors are created, and the Vice-Chancellor closes
the Act " in a solemn Speech," and all assemble in
the Congregation House, " where, at the supplica-
tion of the Doctors and Masters newly created, they
are wont to dispense with the wearing of Boots and
Slop Shoes, to which the Doctors and Masters of
the Act are oblig'd, during the Comitia.''

Such is Ayliffe's description of the ceremonial
as it should be, in 1714 : and these were, so to say,
the dry bones of an Act. But solemn functions and
holiday festivities are apt to go hand in hand,
especially in Universities : and the occasion of
conferring of degrees had already for some time
played the part of our modern " Commemoration,"
of which indeed it was the legitimate progenitor.
The formal academic business of modern days is
limited to the Encaenia and the " Degree day "
which follows : but the length of the entire festival
remains much the same as in antiquity, though the
days are differently occupied. Contemporary

1 88 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

literature describes the Act as a season ruinous to
undergraduates, whose pockets are emptied by it
just as are his who is privileged to have " People
Up for Commem."

The Oxford Act, which should have been an
annual function, was only occasionally held in the
eighteenth century : Hearne complains of the
irregularity. There was no Act in 1725: com-
menting on which Hearne writes : "All Discipline
of the University, I fear, will quite sink in time.
'Tis the Exercise at the Act, and the Lectures that
are to be read, and other Scholastic business that is
to be done, that is the true reason that Acts are
neglected, whatever other reasons are commonly
pretended." There were several Acts in the first
decade. In 1704 " Comitia Philologica" were held
in January, with the special purpose of expressing
the University's congratulations on recent victories.
Marlborough is of course the great hero : to him
"Omnis debetur Apollo": he is apostrophised as
*' Ingens Stator Imperii, Tutela labantis Europae
et saevis Ultor metuende Tyrannis" ! Then followed
in 17 13 a great occasion, described as "Comitia in
Honorem Annae Pacificae " ; an inordinate number
of English and Latin verses were recited, containing
much fulsome flattery of good Queen Anne —

"Where, Mighty Anna, shall thy Glorys end?
Thou great Composer of distracted States ! "

So sings Mr. Joseph Trapp, Professor of Poetry, —
and, as was to be expected at a ceremony held in

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 189

honour of the Peace, a good deal about " Ormondus
Imperator" and very little about Marlborough.
After this, perhaps in consequence of the outrageous
improprieties of the Terrcs Filius, of whom more
anon, there was an interruption of twenty years,
and the ceremony emerges in 1733 — a year,
according to an authority quoted by Mr. Words-
worth, " rendered remarkable in the literary world
by the brilliancy of the Public Act at Oxford."
It was no doubt an important revival, and the
details have been preserved. On the first day, July
5th, "about 5 o'clock" (we are told) "the great
Mr. Handel shew'd away with his Esther, an
Oratorio, or Sacred Drama, to a very numerous
audience, at 5/- a ticket." Hearne, that stalwart
enemy of all innovations, sneers at one Handel, a
foreigner, who sells his worthless book for an ex-
orbitant sum. It was at this performance, and the
repetition of it on the following days, that Mr.
Walter Powel, the Superior Beadle of Divinity,
sang all alone with the musicians. On the next
day no less than twenty-seven prose and verse
pieces were recited in the Theatre, on a great
variety of subjects : a Dialogue between " Bellus
Homo " and " Academicus " : verses on the Orrery,
and the Press : an Ode in Commendation of the
True Magnificence of Mind. Our rude forefathers
were men of endurance. Business began on
7th July with the " Vesperise," prescribed or per-
petuated by the Laudian Statutes : when the

I90 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Inceptor Doctors in Theology, Law, Medicine,
and Philosophy performed the exercise necessary
for their degree in their respective schools. There
were nine candidates for the Doctorate of Divinity :
each was "opposed" by a D.D., to whom the
Vice-Chancellor had given at least twelve weeks'
notice : whatever may be said of other degrees,
the Doctor of Divinity's disputation was not
reckoned a mere formality. Meanwhile the
Inceptors in Arts {i.e. Bachelors proceeding to
the degree of Master) performed their exercises
in the Theatre. Here, "the Senior Proctor dis-
puted upon the three last questions, and confirmed
his argument upon the first, with an Inceptor
Master, the Junior of the Act, who was Respon-
dent, in the Rostrum, facing the Vice-Chancellor.
Then a Pro- Proctor disputed (as should a Terrce
Filius too) upon the second. And the Junior
Proctor upon the last." The disputations lasted
from one to five o'clock : except those for the
degree of D.D., which went on till between six and
seven.

There were more exercises on July 9th (the
"Comitia"), degrees were conferred, and the Act
was closed by a " handsome speech " from the
Vice-Chancellor. But though the ceremonies were
formally concluded, ad eundem degrees were
granted on the following day to some Cambridge
visitors, and on July nth honorary D.C.L.'s were
conferred on various distinguished persons in the

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 191

Theatre. On the same occasion the Rev. Father
Pierre Frangois le Courayer, late Canon Regular
and Librarian of Ste. Genevieve in Paris, made a
speech thanking the University of Oxford for a
**D.D. by diploma" granted to him six years
before. He had defended the validity of English
ordinations, and the succession of Bishops in the
Church of England.

No subsequent "Act" (if any was held) appears
to have deserved a detailed record : and some years
later the Encaenia or Commemoration, as at present
established, took the place of the older ceremony.
It was only a change of date : in procedure the
traditions were preserved. Thus in 1750 there was
the same agreeable combination of music (the
present organ-playing at the Encaenia continues
the custom), speeches, and honorary degrees : "the
theatre was quite full," says the Gentleman s
Magazine, "a very handsome appearance of ladies :
and the whole was conducted with great decorum."
There is an engraving of 1761 which represents
this or some such occasion. The galleries are
crowded with men only, ladies and strangers are in
the area. According to a poet of 1693,

"For Doctors, Masters, Ladies, Fiddles
The gall'ries are reserved : the Middle's
Left open for the mere Rascality,
Servitors, and Promiscuous Quality."

In 1763 Commemoration was made the occasion
for the University to signify its approval of the

192 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

policy of Government in the negotiations for the
Peace of Paris ; and it was a convenient opportunity,
no doubt, to emphasise the fact that Oxford was no
longer in opposition, but now and henceforth to
be reckoned among the loyal supporters of the
House of Hanover. The Chancellor was present.
Solemn academic festivities continued for the space
of four days ; speeches were delivered in English
and Latin, and many honorary degrees conferred.
It was a highly aristocratic occasion : the University,
which loved a lord, was proud to show off the
polite accomplishments of its budding dukes and
earls. On Wednesday, after no less than sixty
honorary D.C.L.'s had been conferred at the
Encaenia, "the duke of Beaufort rose up in the
rostrum on the right hand and spoke a copy of
English verses with a noble gracefulness and
propriety. After him the earl of Anglesey . . .
spoke some English verses in a very distinct
manner, which was graced by a sweet youthful
modesty. Lord Robt. Spencer, the third speaker,
pronounced a Latin oration with bold energy and
great propriety of gesture." One can imagine the
enthusiastic applause of the Hugbys and Crumps
of those days, and the gratification of a genteel
audience which realised that its Universities were
homes of sound learning after all, — in spite of
envious detractors. The Oxford Journal com.vcie.xi\.s
on the splendour of the company on this occasion,
the propriety of elocution as well as action in

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 193

most of the speakers, together with that harmony
and decorum with which the whole ceremony was
conducted. These, says the Journal, reflect a last-
ing honour on the University. All the speeches
and verses were in honour of the peace. Nor was
music wanting, — then as always a great feature of
Commemoration. *' Between every three or four
speeches the musick made a short interval," and in
the afternoon " the company were detained from
3 to 8, hearing that absurd composition Acis and
Galatea." And " on Thursday evening the oratorio
Q){ Judas Maccabeus, and on Friday evening that of
the Messiah, were performed to a crowded and
genteel audience."

It is noteworthy that the custom of reciting
verses appropriate to the occasion survived as
late as 1870. At the first Encaenia after Lord
Salisbury's installation as Chancellor, poets (not
only prize-winners but others) were invited to de-
claim compositions of their own in the Theatre :
and the invitation was accepted, although the ordeal
of facing the disorderly gallery of forty years ago
must have been somewhat trying.

The touch of buffoonery which provided a sort
of "comic relief" for severe academic functions was
till recent years supplied by the undergraduate
spectators in the gallery. They were the legitimate
successors of that chartered libertine, the TerrcB
Filius, who plays an important part in the history
of the " Act." The proper and original function of
13

194 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

TerrcB Filii appears to have been far different from
their later vocation. They were a real part of the
machinery of "inception," playing a statutory role
in the disputations of would-be Masters of Arts,
as we have seen : dealing, one may suppose, with
grave questions in a somewhat lighter vein, and
representing the layman, the Philistine, not unready
to make a jest of the high and subtle speculations
of philosophers: "raillying upon the questions,"
according to Evelyn, who witnessed the Act of
1669, and deplores the decay of manners, which
permitted the " Universitie Buffoone" to "entertain
the auditorie with a tedious, abusive, sarcastical
rhapsodie, most unbecoming the gravity of the
Universitie." Restoration licence corrupted the
manners of the Terrce Filius : instead of *' raising
a serious and manly Mirth by exposing the false
Reasonings of the Heretick," he took to ** being
arch upon all that was Grave, and waggish upon
the Ladies." In the early years of the eighteenth
century the Terrce Filius is a gross and indecent
satirist of the alleged grossness and indecency of
academic dignitaries, who fear but dare not suppress
him : a necessary part of the ceremony, so necessary,
in fact, that apparently the only way to escape him
is to suppress the Act itself. Only the most charit-
able euphemism can describe his preserved speeches
as "arch" and "waggish." With all allowance
made for the larger tolerance of a coarse and
cynical epoch, — even in an age of " common sense,"

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 195

when every one gets credit for the worst motives, —
it is almost incredible that any decent audience
could have listened to him. Yet he seems to have
been very popular. " I love an Oxford Terrce
Filius " (says Squire Calf in the play of An Act at
Oxford^ " better than Merry Andrew in Leicester
Fields'' The Terrce Filius speeches of 17 13 and
1733, which have survived to the present day, are
often indecent, and always outrageously and grossly
personal. Heads and Fellows of Colleges are their
special victims. Much of the still printable part of
the 17 13 oration is directed against Dr. Lancaster,
Provost of Queen's, the "Northern Bear" of
Hearne's Diary : the attack gives a fair idea of the
kind of composition which seems to have been in
vogue — jerky, staccato, a medley of English and
Latin, passing abruptly from one subject to
another.

'' Proximus mihi occurrit Slyboots. And he
Good Man too has been barbarously used : never
did Poor Man take more pains to be a Bishop than
he has done, almost as much as his neighbour the
Vice-Chancellor (Dr. Gardiner of All Souls') did to
be Queen's Chaplain : At Diis aliter visum est.
But no one can say it was his fault." "He has
trimmed and turned with all Parties — Tory in
London, Whig at Woodstock." Then, dropping
easily into verse, the orator continues :

" Of him some Poet thus hath sung
(For none are safe from a Malicious tongue), —

196 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

From Northern Climes Old Slyboots came,
And much hath added to his country's fame.
A Master in all sorts of Evil,
He'll outlye Ayliffe, or the Devil :

For Learning Slyboots ne'er had any,
But Plots and Principles full many."

It is not surprising that there was no TerrcB Filius
— and, apparently as a consequence, no Act —
between 17 13 and 1733. But twenty years did
nothing to reform the "Academick Buffoone": in
1733 he was, if possible, more scurrilous than before,
— feeling probably that opportunities for ribaldry
were rare, and should be utilised accordingly. His
theme was, as usual, the delinquencies of the Don :
hardly any College escaped his lash. Those in
authority were for the most part gluttons or loose
livers. The Bishop of Oxford is addressed with
pleasing directness as a Mitred Hog. All Souls' is
the "Collegium Omnium Animalium," where they
take more care of their bodies than they do of their
souls. The Fellows of Trinity are " Barrell-gutted,"
and if a man wants to personate a Fellow of Brase-
nose he must wear a pillow for a stomach. Jesus
(where, according to Shepilinda, every one is a
gentleman born) is the home of the brutal athlete,
— ** here are your Heroes that vanquish Bargemen,"
whereby it appears that the heroic figure of " Jones
of Jesus," whose prowess and physical strength was
turned into a mere myth by the incredulous wits of
the nineteenth century, had really some historical

EXERCISES AND EXAMINATIONS 197

basis. At Magdalen, presided over by " the great
Hurlothrumbo " (Edward Butler), Fellows were
married, or worse. " Here you may see Little
Brats every morning at the Buttery Hatch, calling
for hot Loaves and Butter in their Papa's name : "

and here was "the ingenious Mr. , who some

Time ago resigned his Fellowship in favour of his
eldest Son." These scurrilities are not history :
undergraduate satire cannot be taken as a picture of
manners. They only serve to illustrate the remark-
able taste of the period : for it may be noted that
the TerrcB Filius speech of 1733 attained at least
to a fourth edition. Thirty years later, Oxford had
become more polite : and although it was feared
that the elaborate ceremonial of 1763 would be
marred by a renewal of indecency, nothing happened
to interrupt the decorous elegance of the Festival.
There was a Terrce Filius : but the traditions of
his office were not preserved : he appeared in the
form of a short series of social satires, quite decent
but wholly uninteresting. Forty years earlier,
Nicholas Amherst had called his satirical attacks
on manners and authority, Terrce Filius, on the
same principle. These papers must of course not
be confused with the actual speeches composed for
delivery in the Theatre : to which they stand in the
same relations as "Punch" to its namesake, the
drama of the street.

VIII
REFORMS AND REFORMERS

IT is a commonplace with modern writers to
describe eighteenth century Oxford as a place
of torpor and indifference to reform — a convenient
and picturesque generalisation, not (it must be
admitted) without some foundation of fact : in the
years following the Restoration the University is
represented as having folded her hands and com-
posed herself to a slumber which was only broken
about a hundred and fifty years later, — a state of
moral and intellectual coma agreeably described by
one College historian as an "euthanasia." That is
a phrase which is gratifying to our own consciousness
of superior virtue and higher ideals : and to a certain
extent it describes the situation justly enough : yet
it should not be forgotten that torpor and apathy
were very far from being the prevailing character-
istics of the first quarter of the eighteenth century.
It was not till after a period of storm and stress
that Oxford entered on that age of indifference to
reforms which lasted till the French Revolution,

left enduring traces on the academic life of the first

198

REFORMS AND REFORMERS 199

half of the nineteenth century, and only passed
away in the throes of two movements, one religious
and one educational, which belong to modern
history.

All ages in the life of vigorous communities are
periods of transition : only in some the process of
change is more obviously visible than in others.
The Oxford of William iii. and Anne was em-
phatically passing through a " transitional " phase :
nor was the University unconscious of the fact. The
best of those who concerned themselves at all with
academic matters recognised fully that the Uni-
versity, and more especially the College, system was
confronted by circumstances and a state of society
for which it was not properly equipped. It is the
common academic problem : and Universities are
then least successful when they think that they
have definitely solved it. Statutes which were
perfectly suited to the social conditions of the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were ill adapted,
if observed only in the letter and not in the spirit,
to those of the eighteenth. The civil disunion of
the past fifty years had troubled all waters. The
part played by Oxford in the Civil War had un-
settled the academic mind. The laxity of the
Restoration, accompanied and succeeded by a
period of religious indifTerentism (which most
eighteenth century moralists seem to associate
with vicious conduct), had had its full share,
teste Anthony Wood, in depraving the moral tone

200 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

of the University. All kinds of abuses were
rampant among undergraduates and Fellows alike :
"the genius of this age," says Humphry Prideaux
in 1695, " is run into libertinism, and the Universities
have drunk too deep of it." For active vice, there
is no part of the maligned eighteenth century which
can compare with the later years of the seventeenth.
Moreover, after the Revolution, new prospects
were opening outside the University. Within
and without, ideals of comfort and luxury were
developing which were unknown to the Don of
an earlier day : and above all, the dangers and
vicissitudes to which Fellows had recently been
exposed inclined them and their successors more
and more to take full advantage of a period of
tranquillity and undisturbed possession of collegiate
emoluments. However much the best Oxonians
may have wished to restore the old studiousness
and simplicity of life, the circumstances of the time
were too strong for them.

The schemes of University reform proposed
under Anne and George i. combine the two obvious
courses of enforcing obedience to old statutes and
framing new ones. Party spirit is at the root of
them, as it is at the root of all the life of that age
of partisanship : and this is quite openly acknow-
ledged by their authors, to whom national salvation
means the ascendency of a political or religious
faction. The question for Lord Macclesfield is
how best the Universities can be pressed into

REFORMS AND REFORMERS 201

the service of the existing Government. Dean
Prideaux' primary object is to make Oxford and
Cambridge bulwarks of the established Church.
" Atheists, Deists, Socinians, Arians, Presbyterians,
Independents, Anabaptists, and other Adversaries
and Sectaries, surround us on every side, and are
set, as in battle array, against us : and if we do not
come armed and provided with equal knowledge
and learning to the conflict, how shall we be able
to support our Cause against them ? " Prideaux'
recommendations for the better government of
Oxford and Cambridge are of the most miscel-
laneous and comprehensive kind. He is concerned
with small details of discipline such as the closing
and locking of common-rooms at ten p.m., and
punishing persons who climb over the College
walls. He has conceived the Utopian idea of
compelling undergraduates to pay cash to their
tradesmen : debt and the accompanying dun, as we
have seen, were among the chief embarrassments
of a scholar's life. Tuition is supposed to be
safeguarded by the institution of penalties for bad
or neglectful tutors : Divinity examinations are to
be strictly conducted. Such details as these belong
to the province rather of the internal administrator
than of the external reformer. The Dean is more
original in his dealings with the Fellowship system,
which is to be very drastically amended. He is
the author of the notable scheme of compulsory
retirement associated with the name of " Drone

202 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Hall." No Fellows except the occupants of certain
University offices are to hold their places for more
than twenty years : non-residence under certain
circumstances is to be permitted ; this in the
existing state of things would have been a great
boon, but the public opinion of the time was
strongly against it. No Fellowships are to exceed
;!^6o a year. Elections to these places are to go
by merit (a proviso showing a pathetic belief in the
power of legislation): claims of "Founder's kin"
are to be disregarded. So far most of Dean
Prideaux' reforms may be admitted to be desir-
able in themselves. He is on more danger-
ous and debatable ground when he suggests
that Government should delegate the perpetual
supervision of the Universities to a standing com-
mission of twenty curators, to be re-appointed
with every new Parliament : a reform at which
modern academic opinion would stand aghast : but
it must be remembered that in 17 15 State inter-
ference with Universities had been sanctioned by
long-standing custom, and only resisted in extreme
cases, as when James 11. intruded a Roman
Catholic President into Magdalen. Another clause
proposes a select body of arbitrators, chosen from
academic residents, to arbitrate in College disputes,
** whereas Fellows of Colleges often spend a great
part of their time as well as of their revenue in
quarrels among themselves or with their Head":
there was at that moment a bitter quarrel raging

REFORMS AND REFORMERS 203

between the Warden of All Souls' and most of
his Fellows.

The beginning of the Hanoverian regime was
naturally an opportune time for suggesting drastic
innovations at the Universities, Oxford in particular.
The idea of a Visitation was in the air : in 17 17 a
very violent Whig pamphlet calls for one, on the
ground that the Church is corrupt, and the fault lies
with the Universities. These learned societies, it
is alleged, are "cages of unclean birds," homes of
Jacobitism, and of perjury which makes Jacobitism
easy. From swearing that you have attended
lectures which have not even been delivered, it is
only a step to breaking the oath of allegiance to
your lawful king, George i. Here, as elsewhere,
there is a clear case against the University. But
the pamphleteer's motive is quite obviously political,
not moral or educational at all : it is reasonably
clear that if Oxonians had only been Whigs and
not Tories they might have perjured themselves to
their heart's content, and nothing said. Universities
were to be reformed, if at all, for political reasons :
it is these that make Lord Macclesfield a reformer,
about 1 718. Prideaux' aim had been to secure the
Universities for the Church : Macclesfield wishes
to "ease their present disaffection " and win them
over to the Government. To serve this end he
contemplates, like the Dean, a very large measure
of State interference : Colleges are not to elect
their own Heads, who are to be chosen by a body

204 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

of State officers, Archbishops, Bishops, and the
Visitor : and even the right of electing to Fellow-
ships, scholarships, and exhibitions is to be vested in
a commission. Fellowships in Law and Physic are
to be allowed : holders of other places who do not
take Orders must vacate in ten years : no one may
be a Fellow for more than twenty.

The motive power at the back of such proposals
was party spirit : and partisan schemes originating
outside the University (the prevailing temper of
which was hardly likely to make Oxford active and
sympathetic in the service of a Hanoverian govern-
ment) were naturally encountered by bitter partisan
opposition. Under such conditions reforms were
not judged on their merits. Other and less whole-
sale academic changes were suggested from time to
time, but did not pass beyond the stage of debate.
The question of exempting Fellows from the neces-
sity of taking Orders seems to have been mooted out-
side the University as early as 1709 : "This" (says
a writer quoted by the learned editor of Hearne's
Diary) " is their damned way to pull the University
in pieces, for by altering the least Statute is striking
at the whole foundation." Whether for this rather
ultra-conservative reason, or because, in the words
of another writer, such an exemption must tend to
the breeding of Sparks and Beaux instead of grave
Divines, the bill for the repeal of statutes compel-
ling Orders never came before Parliament. The
delicate subject of matrimony for Fellows was hotly

REFORMS AND REFORMERS 205

debated at various periods both within and without
the University. Some disapproved even of married
Heads: "this Practice of Marriage," Hearne says,
" is much to the Prejudice of Colleges, and is a very
bad example to Young Men." The writer of a
letter in the Gentleman s Magazine (1762) considers
that " in regard to matrimony Fellows of Colleges
are almost as useless to the State as an equal
number of Monks would be " : the " almost " is signi-
ficant : it may be inferred that in some cases civic
duty was combined with outward compliance with
the College statutes. He can hold anything (said
a later philosopher) who can hold his tongue. One
need not take the scandals mentioned by a TerrcB
Filius too seriously : but Hearne notes in 1726 that
a Dr. Bertie of All Souls', on vacating his Fellow-
ship for a living now acknowledges his marriage.
One reads, too, of Colleges conniving at matrimony.
Twenty-eight years later the subject is again under
discussion. A correspondent advocates the aboli-
tion of celibacy. He is opposed on the too probable
ground that under a system of Married Fellows
Fellowships would become hereditary.

Discussions outside the University had no
serious effect. Practical results were much more
likely to follow when Colleges themselves began to
demand modifications of their statutes, as at All
Souls' in the years between 1702 and 1720. The
questions at issue were the problems of the period :
Must the Fellow be still bound by statutes enacted

206 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

for different social conditions? Must he, if a
graduate in Arts, be always compelled to take
Orders? Did "study of the Common Law" or
"service under the Crown " dispense him from
residence in Oxford ? Might he, in short, make
some kind of career for himself, yet still remain a
Fellow of All Souls' ? These difficulties illustrate
the searchings of heart which must have been felt
by many foundations : and round them there raged
for many years an acrimonious contest between the
Fellows and their very pugnacious Warden, Dr.
Gardiner, who fought, says the chronicler of All
Souls', '* like Athanasius contra mundum" defending
his position with the vigour though not with the
success of a Bentley. The struggle lasted almost
till the death of the valiant Warden, who was
defeated all along the line by the advocates of
change : and " the College of Chichele's statutes,
intended to be largely clerical, strictly residential,
and devoted mainly to the promotion of theology,
civil and canon law, now definitely emerges as a
College preponderatingly lay, the jurists in which
are largely absorbed by the study and practice of
the Common Law, and the distinctive characteristic
of whose members as a whole is non-residence," —
in short, the College as later history has known it.

That decency and good order which has
characterised the conduct of College business for
the last hundred years and more could not be
attained in a moment. The first half of the

REFORMS AND REFORMERS 207

eighteenth century is an unquiet period in the
annals of College government — a period of small
tyrannies and petty jobberies, disputed and even
scandalous elections. At an election to the master-
ship of Balliol in 1727, each of the two rival parties
(neither of them guiltless of questionable arts)
conceived itself to have statutably elected its own
candidate : and the matter had to be decided even-
tually by the Visitor of the College. Similarly
University College in 1722 was unfortunate in the
possession of two Masters. One of them, Thomas
Cockman, had "gained the day by a bare majority.
A formal complaint being lodged with the Vice-
Chancellor and Doctors that the election was con-
trary to statute, another was ordered, at which
William Dennison " (the rival candidate) "presided.
Here he was elected Master. . . . But Cockman
had already been formally admitted." Nothing
short of a royal visitation of the College could
arrange the dispute. At Oriel there was a con-
troversy more typical of the state of the times : Dr.
Carter, the Provost, arrogated to himself the power
(alleged to be statutory) of annulling elections to
Fellowships by his own proper negative. ** Dr.
Carter" (Hearne writes in 1723) "is justly looked
upon as a vile man and a sneaking hypocrite, which
last name Mr. Dyer called him to his face lately,
upon account of his most scandalous behaviour in an
election of Fellows, when there were six electors
to four. Yet the Provost would not allow that six

2o8 OXFORD IN THE EIGBfTEENTH CENTURY

were more than four, but insisted upon a strangely
unheard of negative voice, so as to make four carry
the point against six, and the matter is now before the
Visitor, to the great injury of the College." The
Visitor supported the Provost. But at the next
Fellowship election one of the candidates rejected
by the Provost's negative vote brought an action
against the College in the Court of Common Pleas :
and the Court decided against the Provost's claim —
an important judgment, since, as Hearne no doubt
justly says, "had Carter succeeded, other Heads
would have also insisted upon a negative, and then
there would have been an end of all elections " : both
the University and the Colleges were already ruled
by tyrannies and close oligarchies. It was not only
ambitious Heads who wished to be unquestioned
monarchs of their own societies : one hears of
Visitors "aiming at a tyranny" — as at All Souls',
where an indignant Fellow protests against the un-
constitutional action of a Visitor who "riots in the
vitals of the College." Such misuses and extensions
of power would be natural where the status of
Colleges had been not long ago violently disturbed,
and where they were still battlegrounds for partisan
feeling. The ideas which caused the dispute
between Dr. Gardiner and his Fellows, if other
Colleges did not exactly pass through the same
period of storm and stress, must nevertheless have
affected the state of most foundations : and led, if
not to repeal of existing statutes, yet to evasion or lax

REFORMS AND REFORMERS 209

interpretation — convenient safety-valves for con-
temporary discontent. Internal strife was doubtless
often allayed by compromise : and Governments
naturally grew less careful about the state of Uni-
versities as the Hanoverian dynasty, to which
Oxford at least had been bitterly hostile, became
more stable and secure. Pressure from without and
within being thus gradually lightened, the natural
result followed : whether or not it be true to say
(as Dr. Fowler does) that the reign of George 11.
probably marks the nadir both of attainment and
discipline in Oxford, the University sank after 1730
or thereabouts into a quiescence which lasted for
some decades, and has caused the whole century to
be branded with the stigma of moral and intellectual
torpor. That accusation is too sweeping. Schemes
of reform of the College system, as has been seen,
were mooted in the earlier part of the century : and
the activity of several Heads of Houses, accord-
ing to their lights, would have done credit to
any age.

Christ Church prospered greatly under the rule
of the gifted Dr. Aldrich (logician, chemist, historian,
and musician), and the mitis sapientia of Dr. Smal-
ridge : and Atterbury, whose short reign of two
years intervened between the two, while his
tyrannical disposition is said to have caused much
internal discord in his House, is allowed to have
been zealous in the cause of study. Hearne
certainly calls Smalridge a "Sneaker": but that
14

2IO OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

is doubtless because his " Honesty " was less con-
spicuous than that of his immediate predecessor.
The career of Dr. Arthur Charlett, Master of
University from 1692 to 1722, may be taken as
illustrating the activities and difficulties of con-
temporary Heads. He was an energetic ruler, —
perhaps over-energetic, — confronted, like the War-
den of All Souls', with occasional disaffection and
even rebellion among his Fellows : keenly sensitive
withal to the necessity of standing well with
successive Governments, Tory and Whig : and
accomplishing the difficult task of trimming his sails
to suit the political temper of the moment with only
moderate success. He enjoyed the doubtful priv-
ilege of an intimate acquaintanceship with Hearne,
whose Diary is full of notices of Charlett. Hearne
had no consideration whatever for the arduous task
of a dignitary who very naturally was anxious
"whatsoever king should reign" still to be Master
of University, — if not more. The position of a
prominent Head was no bed of roses. Charlett,
for all his timeserving, got but little preferment
from the Tories, and was soundly rated by the
Whigs : Hearne meanwhile dining with him, drink-
ing his wine and blackening his character as that
of a "malicious invidious prevaricator" : and cynic-
ally chronicling in the Diary how Dr. Charlett,
on the rumour of a " Visitation " of the University,
had at once written to Lord Arran to assure him of
the continued loyalty of University College to the

REFORMS AND REFORMERS 211

House of Hanover. It has to be remembered that
whatever amicable relations may at one time have
subsisted between the Master and the diarist
(though from the first Hearne seems never to have
really trusted Charlett, whom he calls a man of a
strange Rambling Head), in later years even the
pretence of friendship must have been dropped,
when that too "honest" sub-librarian of the
Bodleian was practically deprived of his office, —
a misfortune for which he held the "malicious
invidious prevaricator" jointly responsible with Dr.
Gardiner of All Souls' and Dr. Lancaster of Queen's.
Nevertheless when all is said and done, Charlett
stands out as one of the vigorous Heads of the
period. He was a strict disciplinarian : and if he
was overbearing and arrogant, — " rude to common
men, yet honeying at the whisper" of " The Great"
(perhaps with more reason than some of the
moderns), yet his rule made on the whole for good
government and order. Dr. Lancaster of Queen's
(a strong Whig, and therefore described by Hearne
as "that old Knave, Dr. Lancaster," but by Tickell,
a Whig and a Queen's man

" — Lancaster, adorn'd with every grace,
The chief in merit as the chief in place ")

appears to have been a vigorous Head : and the
fault of Dr. Newton's projected scheme of a
reformed Hart Hall or Hertford College was only
that it was too elaborate and too drastic for his age.

212 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

If there were crying evils, there were, till 1730 or
so, at least, individual authorities who recognised
the fault and did their best to grapple with it.
But there were mischiefs too deep-seated to be
eradicated by individual attempts to compel good
behaviour here and there. The motive to violent
change passed with the altered attitude of Govern-
ment towards the Universities : and as it had never
been backed, so it was not succeeded, by any
general movement towards higher academic ideals.
These, in the partisan strife and practical con-
tinuation of the Civil War which raged in Oxford
nearly as long as there was a Jacobite cause to
fight for, had not much time to develop. Such
stimulants to study as Oxford has from time to
time found in the temper or the circumstances of
the time, were unfortunately not present in the
middle of the eighteenth century. In the later
Middle Ages success at the University had often
been considered a primary qualification for the
public service : academic exercises were a direct
preparation for the minister and the diplomat.
Later, the ardour of the Renaissance had not failed
to re-invigorate the English Universities. But
study had now lost its direct and practical utility :
the student zeal of the spacious times of great
Elizabeth had long ago burnt itself out : and the
sceptical spirit of the Hanoverian age was not
likely to be seriously moved by the regulations
of Laud, — indeed, the Laudian Statutes had never

REFORMS AND REFORMERS 213

been remarkably successful in reconstituting Uni-
versity studies.

But out of the torpor of this certainly inactive
period a better state of Collegiate life and a better
kind of socius — less concerned with national politics
and internal squabbles, more zealous for good
government and education — gradually emerges.
Whatever abuses remain unhealed in the system,
the ideals of resident Oxonians do certainly change
for the better as the middle of the century passes.
Oxford has the name of moving very slowly : and
it is true that alterations are apt to be postponed
for some time after the more progressive spirits of
the age have begun to demand them : but once
begun her progress is apt to be not gradual but
rapid. So it is that towards the end of the
eighteenth century, while the University is torpid,
College life has immensely changed : and one can
imagine that there was nearly as wide a gulf of
division between the average resident Fellows of
1720 and of 1780 as between the Don of the Oxford
Movement and his successor of the recent eighties
and nineties. The tone and temper of Oxford life
has undergone an entire reconstruction. We have
exchanged the days of Charlett and Gardiner for the
age of Cyril Jackson : at the beginning of George i.'s
reign the animus of Oxford is still that of the Civil
War : in the early days of the French Revolution
we are in the beginnings of modern Oxford.
Learning, according to Gibbon, has become not

214 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

only agreeable but even fashionable towards the
close of the century. The historian is writing with
especial reference to Christ Church under the rule
of "the great" Cyril Jackson : and if Charlett and
Gardiner and Smalridge and Lancaster may serve
as types of the " Queen Anne " and very early
Georgian Heads — trimmers and timeservers by
stern necessity, aiming at and sometimes obtaining
a preferment which might remove them from the
difficult duty of governing a turbulent College, but
was as often as not held conjointly with the
Headship — Cyril Jackson is the best representative
of the College dignitary of George iii.'s reign.
During the twenty-six years — 1783 to 1809 — for
which he ruled "the House" he accepted no pre-
ferment, but devoted " those incommunicable gifts
which go to make a great ruler" to the good
government of his society. " Our greatest Deans,"
writes the historian of Christ Church, "have
assuredly been those who have been content to
dedicate their best powers simply and unreservedly
to the service of their House. And this was
emphatically the case with Cyril Jackson." Under
such Heads Oxford stands apart and aloof from
political faction. She is the educator of statesmen,
not the tool of parties. With Colleges at least
proposing to themselves better ideals and endeavour-
ing to secure their better attainment by the
institution of rational examinations, the first half of
the nineteenth century begins : a period which may

CYRIL JACK-SON

FROM AN ENGRAVING BV CHAS. TURNER AFTER THE PAINTING BY VVM. 0\VF,N, R.A.

REFORMS AND REFORMERS 215

have been marked by many academic scandals (as
we have learnt to consider them) but which, at
least for resident Oxonians, was full of a healthy
intellectual and physical life.

In one fashion or another, by reform or com-
promise or evasion. Colleges did, after much
wrangling, settle down eventually into a decent and
well-ordered quietude, — which at least had this
advantage for a later day, that would-be academic
reformers were not as a rule obviously and
necessarily pre-occupied (as in earlier days they
would have been) by the squabbles of their own
Hall and Common-room. Meantime for two-thirds
of the century Oxford had rest from University (as
distinct from College) legislation. The list of
additions to the Statute-Book during that period
is strangely meagre : and the most important
publicly conducted business must have been the
periodical meetings of Congregation to confer
degrees — meetings which, as has been seen, were
held far more frequently than at present, and
which in the conditions of the time must have
been often enlivened by a good deal of human
interest. But all activity does not belong ex-
clusively to the nineteenth century. After the first
half of the eighteenth, the University began to take
a quite modern interest in the working of its own
machinery. In 1758 much discussion appears to
have arisen out of the terms of Mr. Viner 's will,
appointing a Professor and indicating his duties.

2i6 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The eighteenth century was as prolific of " Short
Remarks," " Replies to Short Remarks," " Ex-
amination of Replies to some Short Remarks," " The
Examiner Examined," and so forth, as our own
enlightened age : and while the interpretation of
the will appears to have been settled after the
usual paper war in 1758, other questions — such as
the right of Convocation to alter Statutes, and the
title of certain persons to vote as members of
Convocation on the election of a Chancellor — seem
to have grown out of it. One begins to notice the
"country voter" as a factor in academic politics, —
brought into closer touch with his University no
doubt by increased facilities of communication as
the roads improved and "Flying Machines"
multiplied.

" 'Tis so ! . . . some horrid plot is brewing . . .
No less than Alma Mater's Ruin.
Now fly to ev'ry Whig and Tory
The hastening letter circ'Iatory :
Come up by such a day per fidem.
And shew that you are semper idem.

"Each honest Parson leaves his Hay,
And whips in ere the voting Day :
Curates and Rectors, Masters, Doctors,
And all who can defy the Proctors."

Ten or twelve years later, reform was in the
air. The University began to feel the influences
of the time and even to consider the necessity of
putting its house in order. We have seen that a
statute of this time regulated academic dress : and

REFORMS AND REFORMERS 217

if noblemen were adorned with gold-tasselled caps,
another statute (of 1772) forbade them and their
friends to indulge in the two favourite sports of the
age, "forasmuch as the unbridled and deadly love
of games for a monied stake has in some measure
made inroads upon the University itself, whereby
the fame and reputation of the University may be
stained, from the hearts of the young men being
set upon horse-racing and cock-fighting." This is
merely good government. But in 1773 the publi-
cation of Napleton's pamphlet, above mentioned,
indicated the existence of a general feeling that
University examinations ought to be made more
serious : and the Examination Statute, which laid
down the lines of the system under which we live,
took shape ultimately in 1800. There were also
clear indications that Oxford was realising the
existence of a Zeitgeist. In 1772 "the matric-
ulation test of subscription to the Thirty-nine
Articles at Oxford was discussed in the House of
Commons " : and although " only a minority of the
members were found to be favourable to a more
liberal system," still the fact that such a question
could be discussed, and that the Solicitor-General
could hint at "parliamentary cognisance" in case
the Universities did not reform themselves, seems
to have given the University of Oxford cause for
serious reflection. Was it not better, caution sug-
gested, to "fling wide the gates to those who else
would enter through the breach " ? A war of

2i8 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

"leaflets" was waged in 1772-3: the controversy
followed the lines with which later academic agita-
tions have made us only too familiar. Timid
counsellors argue, " It is a good maxim, Noli quieta
turbare : but the signal is already given and the cry
for Alteration is gone forth : the question is, whether
we choose to capitulate, making our own terms, or
to surrender at discretion." To which stalwart
conservatism replies, " But the Torrent may possibly
be diverted from its present course : or it may in
time subside, if we prudently support our fences.
. . . Shall this University, the mirror of constancy
and steadfast virtue, tremble at the cry of Alteration,
and think of adopting the timid maxim of * lopping
off a limb to save the body ' ? " Also, Cambridge
is firm. One would think they were discussing
Women's Degrees, or Compulsory Greek. It
would be unjust to accuse Oxonians of that day
of a dangerous liberalism. Fear was the parent
of policy. Reform proposed (confessedly as a sop
to public opinion) only some alteration, — possibly
a " Declaration of Acquiescence" rather than actual
subscription, — which would be a little less manifestly
absurd than making boys of sixteen subscribe what
their fathers (as Lord John Cavendish had said in
Parliament) could not understand at sixty : and
neither reformers nor conservatives wished to ex-
tend the clientele of the University : both agreed
upon the necessity of excluding Roman Catholics
and Dissenters. In the event tests remained as

REFORMS AND REFORMERS 219

they were : and the " stalwarts' " belief in the
improbability of parliamentary interference was
justified. Presently the liberal ideas of England
in general were rudely checked by the excesses of
the French Revolution : and for many years the
country had other things to think of than the state
of its Universities.

IX
POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS

THERE are very few periods in English history
which can compare with the Revolution and
the reign of Anne for tortuous and bewildering
political complications. Causes and effects are
mixed together : and what should be causes do
not produce the effects which ought in all reason
to correspond. It is very seldom so difficult for
historians to draw a clear, reasonable, and logically
satisfying picture. The principles of the Revolution
were undoubtedly not the principles of the majority
of Englishmen : yet the Revolution happened. The
Elector of Hanover was not the chosen of the
English nation. Yet the Elector of Hanover
succeeded to the throne without a blow being
struck for his rival. Nor were these events due
to political apathy. Seldom has the country in
general taken so much interest in politics : partisan-
ship perhaps was never so bitter in English history.
During the later years of William's and throughout
Anne's reign Whigs and Tories battled continuously
for the mastery, neither side shrinking from any^

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 221

expedient, however questionable, which should gain
it at least a momentary triumph. Politics were a
game, where the rules of fair play were remarkably
lax, and where individual players occasionally
changed sides. Very unexpected things happened
— unexpected to us who associate Whiggism with
1! a " Liberal" and Toryism with a "Conservative"
I policy : Whigs made wars, Tories made peace :
• Whigs were for a Continental, Tories for an insular
policy : the Whig was a Protectionist, the Tory a
Free-Trader. But the question which lies on the
surface is of course this — Why, England being on
the whole Tory in sentiment, were Whig principles
not only ultimately victorious, but (apparently)
regarded throughout the kaleidoscopic changes of
the period as the only safe side in politics? How
was it that a Tory Minister, backed by a Tory
national sentiment, being in power, the Whigs
succeeded without bloodshed in setting George i.
on the throne, and banishing Toryism from a
share in the government of the country for
forty years? These are among the surprises of
a period when many things fell out contrary to
expectation.

In the chaos of conflicting causes the general

reader can discern two predominant factors : the

I mutual hatred between Whigs and Tories : and

I the fear, common to both parties alike, of Roman

Catholicism. Bitter party feeling solidified the

II Whigs as against the Tories, and would have united

22 2 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

the Tories against the Whigs had it not been that
no Tory had a really definite programme of action,
in respect of the succession to the throne of
England. But the followers of Harley and St.
John were divided in sentiment and allegiance.
They, as much as the Whigs, respected the Act
of Settlement : they, more than the Whigs, were
vowed to the defence of the English Church : as
long, therefore, as the Pretender remained a Roman
Catholic, — and it is infinitely creditable to him that
he never seems to have considered that the English
crown valait bien une messe — no Tory could be
a Jacobite, consistently with his avowed principles.
The course of the Whig was clear : the Tory was
confronted by an obvious dilemma. Hence the
party of Somers and Shrewsbury, representing a
minority in the country and the House of Commons,
was strong, united, and decisive in action : while
Oxford and Bolingbroke, with a Parliamentary
and national majority at their back, wavered,
hesitated, and lost. After all, it is active minorities
that make revolutions.

The University of Oxford has often been blamed
for its devotion to causes which (as it is alleged)
real enlightenment would have recognised as
doomed to failure from the first : an unfortunate
habit of loyalty which is easily traced to a merely
unintelligent conservatism and hatred of change.
Perhaps in the middle years of the eighteenth
century Oxonians were guilty of some lack of

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 223

political insight, and clung to a cause which was
practically extinct. But certainly this is not true
of the Oxford of the two decades following the
Revolution. That change was brought about by
the decisive action of a minority which had made
up its mind, — a minority of which the leaders were
a powerful section of the nobility, and the rank and
file the population of most of the large English
towns. The Tory forces, on the other hand, were
recruited from the ranks of the lower clergy, and
the country squirearchy. In respect of voting
power, these classes represented the majority of
Englishmen : these were the defenders of " High
Church " principles and the divine right of kings :
and Oxford was closely associated with both the
clergy and the squirearchy. The University was
then, as for a century and a half afterwards, governed
by and for the Church. Colleges were ruled by
clerical opinion, and Fellowships were the road to
ecclesiastical preferment. Rank and wealth were
of course represented : but most of the families
which sent their sons to Oxford belonged to the
half-farmer, half-squire class, which was still very
numerous though already decreasing : a class not
very accessible to new ideas, but conservative and
insular by instinct and tradition, suspicious of
novelties and contemptuous of "enthusiasts," in-
spired, like the old-fashioned Greeks, by a true
and genuine hatred of foreigners, — in short, a class
essentially British. These were the "old country

2 24 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

putts," whom Amherst describes as ridiculed by
their more fashionable sons : and who were destined
in the progress of the years either to rise into the
state of "gentlemen" or sink into that of small
farmers. In the early century, then, Oxford repre-
sented at least the inferior ranks of the clergy, and
the rustic layman : and in representing these it
represented England, and was for a time at least
truly national : for Toryism was the national spirit.
No doubt there was much Jacobite sentiment in
the University. It could not be otherwise. When
Royalty visited Dr. Routh at Magdalen a century
later and saw the portrait of Prince Rupert in the
Hall, it commented on the fact that Oxford was
apparently "fond of the old family still." "The
old family " was bound by too many ties of senti-
ment to what had been its capital for a time to be
lightly forgotten : and if the relations between the
Stuarts and the University, or at least a College
here and there, had been occasionally strained, yet
the mistakes of James ii. did not blot out the
memory of Charles i. There was a special and
personal link between Oxford and the Stuart
dynasty : Jacobitism would have died harder on
the banks of I sis than elsewhere : but apart from
this, if Oxford was for the most part Jacobite, it
was for the same reason that every Tory was more
or less a Jacobite in the later years of Queen
Anne's reign, — simply because part of the Whig
programme was the succession of the Elector

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 225

of Hanover, and to be a Whig was to be the
enemy of Crown and Church :

"The Crown is tack'd unto the Church,
The Church unto the Crown,
The Whigs are slightly tack'd to both.
And so must soon go down."

The political opinions of a University are not
in these days a matter of very grave anxiety
to Governments, Liberal or Conservative. Aca-
demical teachers are miscellaneous in their political
leanings, and moreover have other fish to fry, in
this strenuous age, than the training of budding
Radicals or incipient Unionists. The proportion
of University-trained members of Parliament (in
the lower House at least) is not very large. Even
if it were, the trend of thought in so many seats
of learning as we at present possess is by no means
consistent and uniform : the influences of teachers
neutralise each other : and when one University
is dangerously progressive. Ministers can console
themselves by the reflection that another is peril-
ously reactionary. But when Oxford and Cam-
bridge stood practically alone in England, and
between them represented such Higher Education
as the country possessed, their relation to the
Government of the country was very different : and
it was really a matter of grave importance that
Oxford was the Jacobite capital, the very Mecca
of Toryism. London and the two Universities
were the effective seminaries for politicians. In
15

226 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

point of size and general importance, the city of
Oxford bulked much larger among English towns
than it does now. Religious and ecclesiastical
controversy entered very largely into the party
questions of the early eighteenth century : and
Colleges bred ecclesiastical controversialists : if the
pulpits were to be " tuned," the best means to that
end was to tune the Universities. If the news-
paper press was not as yet very important as a
disseminator of opinions, yet it was an age of
pamphleteering, and educated partisans were much
in demand. It was fully recognised that academic
support was likely to be very useful to the Govern-
ment of the day : witness such schemes as that
proposed by Prideaux, the main object of which
was to make Fellows of Colleges serviceable in-
struments of the powers that be. Altogether,
Oxford — always at that period regarded as much
more closely in touch with public affairs than
Cambridge — was very much before the eyes of the
country : and the doings of University authorities
were matters of really national importance. Lead-
ing Dons — more especially, Heads of Houses —
were placed in a position of some embarrassment.
They had much to gain and much to lose. Most
of them wanted preferment. Bishoprics and
deaneries were the rewards of party loyalty : but
uncompromising loyalty was dangerous, in the con-
tinual and rapid fluctuations of political power, and
might even lead to violent State interference : the

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 227

episode of Magdalen College and James 11. was
only the last of a series of deprivations and ex-
pulsions and forced elections. Under the circum-
stances, if the policy of many Heads was that of
the Vicar of Bray, the uncertainty of the political
outlook during Anne's reign is surely ample justifica-
tion. If they were Whigs, their course might be
comparatively clear : but if Tories (and most were
Tories by instinct) they could not, being Church-
men, but be hampered by the illogicality of the
situation. Hearne complains that Tories in Oxford
were waverers. No one knew what might happen
when the Queen should die : and if some, like
Dr. Lancaster of Queen's, according to satire,
were " Tories in London, Whigs at Woodstock "
(and it must be allowed that the vicinity of Blenheim
hardly made for political stability), it is of course
easy to brand them as mere selfish timeservers :
yet, after all, learning does not flourish in an
atmosphere of expulsions and intrusions, and
charity may give the sadly harassed Don some
credit for consulting the best interests of his College
and University by taking the course best calculated
to lead to a quiet life.

But they got no credit from the contemporary
diarist. H imself the bitterest of partisans — as sound
a Tory as Macaulay was a Whig — Hearne had
about equal consideration for professed opponents
and timeserving dignitaries. That fine, healthy
spirit of intolerance, which dubbed the Tory Croker

228 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

"a bad, a very bad man," still animates the
" Hypobibliothecarius " when he characterises a
Whig. No one in the opposite camp can be a
good man, or even a good writer. Milton himself
is classed with "such other Republican Rascals."
Contemporary divines fare but ill : Hoadly is " that
infamous and Scandalous Advocate for Rebellion " :
Burnet, being of ** Republican, Presbyterian
Principles," "has but very little skill in either
Prophane or Sacred Antiquity, much like the
Generality of the Low Church Herd." But
timorous and timeserving friends are as bad as
open enemies, or worse. Arthur Charlett, the
Master of University, was one of these : he offered
himself as bail for Sacheverell at the latter's trial,
and was eager to profess his eternal loyalty to the
House of Hanover a few years later : under circum-
stances like these no one who enjoyed the privilege
of Hearne's society — and Charlett and Hearne
were, in a manner, intimates, although the intimacy
seems to have been one long series of amantium
ircB without the redintegratio amoris — could avoid
a good deal of plain criticism. Charlett " in reality
(notwithstanding all his Pretenses) rather obstructs
Learning . . . than any way promotes it," indignus
ille Collegii Universitatis Magister, et qui viris
omnibus literatis risui esse debet : apart from certain
personal grievances, it is sufficiently clear that one
real reason why Charlett can do nothing right is
that "it is his Business now to talk and act for ye

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 229

Whiggs on purpose that he may get Preferment."
But Hearne's real bugbear in these troublesome
times was Dr. Lancaster, the Provost of Queen'S)
Vice-Chancellor from 1706 to 17 10. No doubt it
was a difficult matter for any one so highly placed
to satisfy the ideals of Hearne, who is inclined to
hold that Vice-Chancellors "in the lump is bad " :
Dr. Delaune of St. John's, Lancaster's predecessor
in the Vice-Cancellarian office, was no better than
he should be, and in fact was called Gallio because
he cared nothing for the interests of the University :
but the Provost comes under a quite special con-
demnation, as being a typical trimmer and timeserver
— "a second Smooth-boots," which is Hearne's
usual nickname for him. Lancaster was apparently
a prudent and cool-headed man, keenly sensible of
the dangers of the time : but in the eyes of an
extremist whom Non-jurors alone could satisfy, he
was merely a weak-kneed trimmer, wavering between
Tory principles, which he was afraid to avow, and
a mean compliance with Whiggism. Thus in 1708,
on the occasion of his confirmation in the office of
Vice-Chancellor, the Provost "made a speech as
usual, in which he spoke much in praise of the
Doctrine of Passive Obedience, and commended
the University for instilling yt Doctrine into ye
Young Gentlemen : but it must be noted yt this
smooth Dr. never acted according to this Doctrine,
but was always for closing, as he found it suited
with secular interest." Hence it is not surprising

2 30 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

that when Lancaster went out of office In 1710,
Hearne "only notes that Lancaster, I believe, was
the worst Vice-Chancellor that ever was in Oxon.
'Tis yt by his Tricks he has rais'd to himself a
Pillar of Infamy." Perhaps it almost follows as a
necessary corollary that " Old Smooth-boots, when
a Tutor, was idle and sottish, and neglected his
pupils."

The picture of politics which can be constructed
from the pages of Hearne shows Oxford to have
been (as it usually is) very fairly representative
of the state of English feeling generally. The
Whiggism, or at least very much modified Toryism,
of Bishops found its counterpart in the halting
attitude of prominent academic dignitaries. Apart
from these, a Tory spirit prevailed in the University
as in the country, — more or less irreconcilably
militant as it was less or more embarrassed by
searchings of heart about Protestant succession :
and in Oxford, as in the country at large, there was
a comparatively small but extremely active body of
Whigs, strong with the strength of a party that
relied more on logic than on sentiment. Political
animus showed itself in academic business, — con-
ferring or refusing of degrees and elections to office.
College squabbles and jealousies were embittered
by politics : Fellows wrangled and slandered in
common-room and coffee-house, where for the most
part Tories had it all their own way : but at All
Souls* there was a small and select "Woodcock

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 231

Club"; "on the 30th of January last," Hearne
notes, " was an abominable Riot committed in All-
Souls' College. Mr. Dalton and Mr. Talbot, son
to the Bp. of Oxford, both Fellows, had a Dinner
drest, at 1 2 o'clock, part of which was woodcocks,
whose Heads they cut off, in contempt of the
memory of the B. Martyr. . . . Mr. Dalton was
for having calves-heads, but the cook refused to
dress them." Officially, Oxford was loyal — effusively
loyal — to William and Mary as to Anne, — Anna,
Stuartorum soboles. Our own age, which has
discarded the conventions of later Roman poetry,
stands aghast at the facility with which graduates
and undergraduates dropped into adulatory verse
whenever the reigning house stood in need of
sympathy or congratulation. When Queen Mary
died, her decease was deplored by Aldrich the
Vice-Chancellor in elegiacs, and by Charlett, after-
wards Master of University, in alcaics : Professors,
more daring than the moderns, expressed their grief
in Arabic, Turkish, Persian, Samaritan, and Malay.
The Latin verses are formed on the approved
classical models, and deification is merely normal :
'* Deam rebar non potuisse mori " is not too strong
for Lord Plymouth of Christ Church, one of the
many Persons of Quality who show a good deal of
technical skill as versifiers. The late Queen is (as
one might expect) like "purpureus flos succisus
aratro," and "udam linquit humum fugiente penna."
Similarly in the collection of verses ("Pietas et

2 32 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Gratulatio ") which celebrates the accession of Anne,
the new sovereign is "prsesens Dea." Here again
the University has the gift of many tongues, —
Anglo-Saxon, Persian, Hebrew, Arabic, and even
Cornish ! The fact should be remembered : though
it would be rash, perhaps, to infer the existence of
profound scholarship. It should be noted that
Oxford of that day was fluent and fairly correct in
Latin, but expressed itself seldom and for the most
part abominably in Greek. This improved later :
John Burton of Corpus Christi writes good Greek
in the middle of the century.

Tories and Whigs might be at each others'
throats : but both parties could be loyal, for the
present. Tory Oxford could combine loyalty to
William and Mary and Anne, with attachment to
the Stuart Kings. Yet it must be confessed that
those official pietates had so little to do with the real
sentiment of the University, that even the advent
of a definitely Whig Hanoverian dynasty did not
check the flow of frigid and elegant exercises.

But it was the Sacheverell affair in 1 709 which
especially emphasised the place of Oxford in national
politics. The defence of Church principles was not,
naturally, compatible with entire consistency in
relation to other political problems : and it was not
in any way surprising that Magdalen College, which
had fought James 11. for a Whig principle, should
later produce a champion of Toryism. Henry
Sacheverell was a Fellow of the College, — where,

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 233

strangely enough, he shared a room with Addison :
— his portrait hangs in the Hall. Uffenbach saw
him, and was surprised that so well-looking a man
had undertaken such a discreditable business — so
garstige Handel angefangen. The story of his
short period of fame or notoriety belongs to the
history of England, and need not be retold here.
Mere audacity in expressing the views held by
the rank and file of High Churchmen gave
him a momentary prominence : he was otherwise
in no way qualified, apparently, to lead or repre-
sent a party in the State. Even some High
Churchmen regarded him as little better than a
firebrand, possibly as dangerous to his own cause
as to any other :

"Non tali auxilio, nee defensoribus istid,
Tempus eget "

was the sentiment of the soberer heads among his
party. One of Hearne's London correspondents
calls Sacheverell "your mighty Boanerges," who
"thundered most furiously at Paul's against ye
phanaticks," insomuch that "All ye Congregation
were shaken agen at the terrour of his inveterate
expressions " : "I could not have imagined," says
another correspondent, "if I had not heard it
myself, that so much Heat, Passion, Violence, and
scurrilous Language, to say no worse of it, could
have come from a Protestant Pulpit. ... I'm sure
such Discourses will never convert anyone, but I'm

2 34 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

afraid will rather give the Enemies of our Church

great advantage over her : since the best that her

true sons can say of it, is that the Man is mad :

and indeed most people here think him so."

Hearne himself, whom no one can really satisfy

but a Nonjuror, had at first a very poor opinion of

the preacher. Some months before Sacheverell's

celebrated sermons the diarist had occasion to notice

him as a frequent preacher at St. Mary's, and

described him in the kind of language which he

generally reserves for a Whig : proud, ignorant,

vicious, drunken, loquacious, "verba contumeliosa

et pulpito sacro prorsus indigna effutiit : nonnum-

quam etiam fanaticos et rebelles, ac si honestus

homo esset, conviciis lacessivit. Verum est plane

simulator improbus " — an unprincipled charlatan :

really worse, in fact, than his future opponent "that

rascal Ben Hcadly." This is rather strong, for a

Tory. It was the doubt of Sacheverell's sincerity

which rankled :

"Among ye High Churchmen I find there are several
That stick to ye Doctrine of Harry Sacheverell.
Among ye Low Church too I find yt as oddly
Some pin all their faith upon Benjamin Hoadly.
But we moderate Men do our Judgment suspend,
For God only knows how these Matters will end ;
For Salisbury, Burnett, and Kennett White show
That as ye times vary so principles go :
And twenty years hence, for ought you or I know,
'Twill be Hoadly the High, and Sacheverell ye Low."

Mad or sane, sincere or insincere, Sacheverell found
himself famous. Another age might have allowed

HENRY SACHEVERELL

FROM THE PAINTING IN THE HALL OF MAGDALEN COLLEGE

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 235

the sermons described by Hearne's correspondents
to pass unnoticed : but the pulpit was a recognised
force in politics, and the Whig Government could
not avoid taking action against the preacher, — with
the result of giving him, what he probably most
desired, celebrity. The misjudged impeachment
which gave the Whigs a Cadmean victory and
the Tory firebrand a cheap and highly desirable
martyrdom, made him a popular hero wherever
the Tory rank and file did congregate, and nowhere
more than in Oxford, — which is always only too
ready to respond to the cry of "The Church is in
danger " : for Oxford was the headquarters of the
Tory clergy and squirearchy.

A Pro-Vice-Chancellor was Sacheverell's bail.
There was great delight in Oxford at the conclusion
of the trial : " Last night," Hearne writes on 24th
March, "and on Wednesday night were Bonfires in
Oxford for Joy of Dr. Sacheverell's being delivered
with so gentle a punishment, and the Mob burnt a
tub, with the Image of a tub Preacher, in one of
them." A week later we hear that "The Ld.
Mayor of London has commanded a stop to be
put in the City to Bonfires, Illuminations, and
other publick Rejoycings for Dr. Sacheverell : but
ye like have been in all parts of England, and they
are still kept up, and in Oxford Mr. Hoadly " (the
champion of the other side) "was burnt in Effigie
and the Mob burnt his Book." Hearne was not a
man to shed his prejudices easily. But he seems

236 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

to have been rather shaken by the extraordinary-
success of the Sacheverell incident in consoHdating
the sadly disintegrated Tory party : recognising
that even a firebrand might have its uses. When
it turned out that Sacheverell's impeachment inten-
sified popular enthusiasm for Church principles, the
end was held to justify the means. Anyhow, the
diarist reconsiders his earlier view, and acknow-
ledges that there may be some good in Sacheverell
after all : " it must be granted he has shew'd himself
in this Case to be a brave, bold Man, and in the '■
main truly honest, and he has merited the Applause
of all good Friends to the Church of England and
Monarchy." But if Hearne's ill opinion of Sach-
everell was shaken for a moment, it is only fair to
so consistent a hater to acknowledge that later the
diarist was as bitter as ever, — always suspecting the jL
Doctor's sincerity, and dwelling with evident gusto ^
on a hostile biography {TAe Modern Fanatick)
which shows how Sacheverell will not acknowledge
his own uncle, and has no skill in Astronomy.

Such was the Sacheverell affair, — the last out-
break of angry and militant Toryism during the
reign of Anne. Political conditions presently gave
the defenders of " High Church principles " a
temporary supremacy, of which they were rudely
deprived by the Queen's death and the accession
of the Elector of Hanover. So abrupt a shock
could not fail to produce a storm of indignation in
the "Jacobite capital," — as indeed in every

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 237

parsonage and manor-house that looked to Oxford
as the citadel and stronghold of sound political and
ecclesiastical principles. The veriest timeserver
among Tory Dons forgot his opportunism for the
moment : Oxford was for the nonce in almost open
rebellion against the new regime. The Tories,
says Hearne, had only themselves to thank for
being turned out of power : but this did not mend
matters. It was a tolerably gross insult to the
reigning Sovereign that on 20th October 17 14, the
very day of George i.'s Coronation, " Sir Con-
stantine Phipps Kt. (lately Lord Chancellor of
Ireland, and turn'd out by ye said K. George)"
had the honour of a D.C.L. degree conferred on
him. In the following year the Duke of Ormond,
Chancellor of the University, being impeached
and forced to take refuge in France, Oxford
elected his brother Lord Arran to fill his place :
the new Chancellor took the oaths of his office on
22 nd September, amid such shouting and expressions
j of joy as Hearne says he never saw before.
Meantime there had been serious riots in Oxford
On 28th and 29th May of the same year 17 15, — the
first day being George i.'s birthday, — " the People,"
says Hearne, "run up and down crying King
James the 3rd, the true King, no Usurper, the
Duke of Ormond, etc., and Healths were every-
where drank suitable to the Occasion, and every
one at the same time Drank to a new Restoration,
which I heartily wish may speedily happen."

238 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

They "pulled down a good part of the Quakers'
and Anabaptists' meeting-houses " and attacked the
house where the Whig "Constitution Club" was
holding a meeting, so that the Constitutionalists
had to fly for their lives. Much noise and uproar
followed, and a shot from Brasenose is said to
have wounded one of the Tory leaders. Street
riots in Oxford begin easily and are ended without
much difficulty, as a rule : nor does it appear that
this was an exception. What part the University
took in the disturbance is not very clear. The
Tory academic dignitaries laid the blame on the
Whig Constitution Club, which was about to carry
on Extravagant Designs, but was prevented by an
Honest Party. The Club naturally took a different
view. In spite of its notoriety, the whole affair
appears to have been of no great consequence (except
indeed for the destruction of the meeting-houses) :
but, as Tacitus says, "in civitate discordi . . . parvse
res magnis motibus agebantur " — trifles assumed an
exaggerated importance. And of course it must
be remembered that Oxford was a far more
representative town than it is now : " When Oxford
draws knife, England's soon at strife," could still
be believed to be true : even in point of size
the town was relatively considerable. Ayliffe's
calculation of 3000 resident Dons and undergradu-
ates certainly refers to the seventeenth century,
not to his own day. But undoubtedly the
University was numerically a far more important

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 239

part of the country than it is now. Anyhow, the
Government took a serious view of the matter,
held the Tory Heads (perhaps rightly) responsible,
and sent " rattling letters " to Dr. Charlett,
the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, and the Mayor. Lord
Townshend, who wrote the rattling letters, "says
his Majesty (for so they will stile this silly
Usurper)," writes Hearne, " hath been fully assur'd
that the Riots both nights were begun by Scholars,
and that Scholars promoted them, and that he.
Dr. Charlett, was so far from discountenancing
them, that he did not endeavour in the least to
suppress them." 1715 was a troubled year at
Oxford. On June loth (the Pretender's birthday)
there would have been public rejoicings had they
not been stopped by Dr. Charlett, the Proctors,
and others : the rattling letters had their effect.
Hearne himself walked out with a party of
"honest" men to Foxcombe, where they were
"very merry." Bishop Smalridge, being what
Hearne calls a Sneaker, went no further than to
celebrate the occasion privately in his lodgings,
with the noblemen and gentlemen-commoners of
Christ Church. There was more trouble in
August, when some scholars rescued one Prichard,
who had been committed to custody for cursing
King George. Town and University were alike
disloyal. In the same month an officer "beat up
for Volunteer Dragoons in Oxford. But he was
hissed at by many, especially by the Scholars, and

240 OXJFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

found very little Encouragement. Which irritated
him to such a Degree (he was a Captain) that he
declared Oxford was the most devillish, hellish
place that ever he came near. 'Ay, 'tis certainly
Hell,' " said the honest Captain (whose definition
of Heaven one would have heard gladly). He could
have raised three hundred men in London in a few
minutes, but here "hardly any one comes in, such
an inveteracy do they show to his Majesty." The
author of "The Muses' Fountain Clear" might
try to show that Oxford was only dissembling her
love for the Hanoverian dynasty after all, and that
even Dr. Sacheverell had prayed at his trial for
the succession of the illustrious House of Hanover.
Perhaps he had. But the disloyalty of the Uni-
versity was beyond question or apology. Fidelity
to the Stuarts could not be forgotten in a day :
many an undergraduate no doubt was keen to
strike a blow for James in., as his grand-
father had ridden out to Edgehill for Charles i.,
or with Rupert to raid the Parliamentary pickets||
in Buckinghamshire. Matters had come to such
a pass that, in the words of a contemporary
pamphleteer, the University " would have been
illuminated in a few days with the Flame of
Rebellion and the Students had appeared in open
arms against the King, on behalf of a Popish
Pretender, for the safety of the Church," — had not

" The King, observing with judicious eyes
The state of both his Universities,"

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIOxNS 241

sent "a troup of horse" to overawe disaffection, —
in fact, Col. Pepper's dragoons, and another
regiment. This force marched into Oxford from
Banbury on 6th October, at four in the morning.
They "beset the Passages out of Oxford," and
then went to the Vice-Chancellor and Mayor, whose
assistance they desired "in a rude manner." All
College gates being closed by the Vice-Chancellor's
order, the soldiers spent the morning in searching
" Publick Houses" for Jacobite officers who had
been in hiding there : most of these had already
escaped: one of them. Colonel Owen, "a brave,
stout Man," was nearly caught at the Greyhound
Inn, but "having notice that the House was beset,
he presently made his escape over Magdalen
College wall," within which, then as afterwards,
there were persons not actuated by a lively loyalty
towards the House of Hanover. There, according
to a tradition, he was concealed in the turret of the
building called the " Grammar Hall." Colonel
Owen's servant was arrested, and two or three
other persons : and the soldiers left Oxford at four
in the afternoon. Two months later there were
some further arrests. Two " honest, Non-juring
gentlemen " of Hearne's acquaintance, Mr. Sterling
and Mr. Gery of Balliol, "were taken up by the
Guard of the Souldiers now at Oxford," but
released after a day or so. Balliol, it should be
remembered, was at this time the very citadel of
Tory principles.
16

242 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

The events of so dangerous a year as 1715
showed how little was really to be feared by a
Whig Government from the Jacobite capital. The
bark of the University was worse than its bite.
But the rebellious temper of Oxford remained as a
standing cause of offence : and raids by Colonel
Pepper's dragoons could only have a temporary
effect. It is not surprising that there was a cry for
a "Visitation" of the Universities: a pamphleteer
of 17 1 7 calls for Government interference, on the
ground that the " scandalous lives of those wretches
who call themselves of the Clergy " are due to the
state of the Universities — particularly Oxford :
Cambridge, though bad, is better. The nature of
University oaths (the writer continues) is such that
young men are " Bred up in the abominable
practice of unavoidable perjury : horrid Beginning ! "
Universities are "a centre of disaffection and dis-
loyalty" : "nurseries of rebellion and treason":
"cages of unclean birds." But the Whig Govern
ment wisely enough decided apparently to take no
action in the matter, realising that Visitations are
apt to do more harm than good. It was much
easier to deal with the caucus of Heads who really
governed Oxford by the usual methods of threat
and bribe, than to create martyrs and malcontents
by a Visitation.

The Heads were in a difficult position. Most
of them were Tories by principle and tradition.
Yet, — at worst in the interests of their own

m ^ i

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 243

advancement, at best for the safety (as they
probably thought) of their respective societies,
they must make their peace with the Hanoverian
regime : and they must do this in the teeth of
criticism from their own rank and file, who had less
at stake and were little inclined to make allowance
for the timeservings of their superiors. Hearne
records with evident glee that his acquaintance
Charlett, the very active and useful Master of
University, has been moved by fear of a Visitation
to write a letter to the Chancellor (rather strangely,
as the Chancellor was Ormond's brother), assuring
him "that University College is entirely devoted
and attached to the Illustrious House of Hanover."
Perhaps the alleged letter was only a skit : but
anyhow it illustrates the difficulty of the period.

However, if Heads were obliged to profess
their own devotion to the House of Hanover, they
could square matters with their consciences by
doing their best to make matters unpleasant for the
local Hanoverians. John Ayliffe, a Whig Fellow
3f New College, had published a book entitled
The Ancient and Present State of the University of
Oxford (Hearne calls it a silly, lying, abusive, and
njudicious Rhapsody) — a work which apparently
hrew several Tory Heads of Colleges " into a Fit
)f Shivering and a strange Panic Fear." For this
)ffence the Vice-Chancellor, Gardiner of All Souls',
vas commanded by the Chancellor to proceed
Lgainst Ayliffe " for writing and publishing an

244 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURA

infamous libel, wherein the Doctor had defame
King Charles the First and Second and Kin
James the First and Second, Archbishop Laud, th
late Ministry, and many other persons." The
University Court proceeded with the fairness an
impartiality to be expected where the prosecuto
was also the presiding judge, and Ayliffe defende
himself on technical grounds of his enemies
illegality : but eventually he was deprived of h\4
degree and banished from Oxford : and the
machinations of the Tory Warden of New College
forced him to resign his Fellowship (unless, a
Hearne says, he sold it). The position of Heads o
Houses of this critical period falls short of entire
respectability. They must submit to a Whig
Government. But they can do something to make
submission tolerable by bullying a Whig Fellow.
It was of course still easier to bully a Whig under-
graduate (or Bachelor). Rightly or wrongly, the
" Meadowcourt affair" was represented by Whig
writers as a scandalous miscarriage of justice : "a
gentleman of Merton College," such is Amherst's
summary of the story, "was put into the Black Book
for drinking King George's health, and obliged to
plead the benefit of the ac^ of grace to get his degree,
after he had been kept out of it two years for that
heinous offence" — a sufficiently damning indictment.
Perhaps the story is worth re-telling. The "Con-
stitution Club" above-mentioned — an association
formed, according to Tory opinion, for the planning

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 245

of Extravagant Schemes, or otherwise the
maintenance of Whig and Hanoverian principles —
had met on May 29th, 17 16, to drink "the King's
and other loyal healths " in the company of some
officers of Colonel Handyside's regiment. This
was apparently too much for the patience of Oxford.
Gownsmen and townsmen gathered outside the
tavern, threw squibs into the meeting, and insulted
it with " loud peals of hisses and conclamations of
down with the Roundheads'' At about eleven at
night, the Junior Proctor, Mr. Holt of Magdalen,
came upon the scene, — one may hope, only in the
interests of public order, — and requested Mr.
Meadowcourt, the steward of the club, to give some
account of its presence at the tavern. Meadowcourt
replied that they were met to celebrate the restora-
tion of Charles 11. and to drink King George's
health : and that they should be obliged to him if
he would drink King George's health with them :
which the Proctor " after some intreaties " consented
to do. One of Handyside's officers made himself
responsible for the good conduct of the scholars
present, and " waited upon the Proctor downstairs."
According to the Whig chronicler, all was done in
decency and good order : but next day it appeared
how parlous a thing it is to invite a Proctor to drink
the King's health. Holt sent for Meadowcourt,
explained to him that while he himself might
overlook the " affront " offered to him, his colleague,
the Senior Proctor (White of Christ Church), was

246 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

very angry, and not to be pacified. This was too
true. Meadowcourt apologised to Holt for any
improper conduct of which he might have been
guilty : but was nevertheless handed over to the
tender mercies of the Christ Church Proctor : who
used very strong language about the Club in
general and Meadowcourt in particular, and event-
ually put the luckless Constitutionalist into the
Black Book (a gloomy volume in which are
registered the names of gross offenders against
academic law) and sentenced him to be kept back
from his Master's degree for two years. He and
Mr. Carty of University were accused of " prophan-
ing, with mad intemperance, that day on which he
ought, with sober chearfulness, to have commemo-
rated the restoration of King Charles ii.," and
"drinking in company with those persons who
insolently boast of their loyalty to King George,
and endeavour to render almost all the university,
besides themselves, suspected of disaffection " : of
resisting the Proctors : Meadowcourt especially, of
abetting officers " who ran up and down the high-
street with their swords drawn," and "commanding
all the company to drink King George's health,"
Such is the story told by Nicholas Amherst, the
author of TerrcB Filius, a Whig scholar of St.
John's who was in permanent opposition to the
academic authorities of his time, and who was in
fact rusticated by his own society. Obviously, the
source is tainted. The Whigs and Tories of 1720

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 247

or so did not go out of their way to make allowances
for each other's failings : nor can the judgments of
undergraduates upon Dons be invariably accepted
as final. Moreover, Amherst was rusticated, — a
fact which renders him open to suspicion as a
narrator : yet again one does not know whether
he was rusticated because he was a Whig, or a
Whig because he was rusticated. At any rate,
he is a partisan, and his story may omit essential
details while not departing from verbal truth.
Theoretically, no one can blame one subject for
inviting another to drink their common Sovereign's
health. But the action may not be laudable at all
times and in all places. A perfectly civil proposal
may be made in a perfectly uncivil way. Altogether
the affair illustrates the difficulty of writing history.
Meadowcourt's troubles had only begun. When
the prescribed two years had elapsed, he proposed
to supplicate for his degree. This was more easily
said than done. The Proctor of the year demurred
to allowing Meadowcourt to supplicate, on the
ground that (out of mere courtesy) it was necessary
first to obtain Mr. White's consent. White was
approached, and had no objection personally : but
he could not consent, he said, without the concur-
rence of Mr. Holt. Unluckily Mr. Holt also " had
a partner," Mr. White ! Neither of them would,
apparently, be the first to take any step ! They
had resolved (says Amherst) that Meadowcourt
should not have his degree : so White could do

248 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

nothing without Holt, and Holt would do nothing
without White. At last they so far collaborated
("jumbled their learned noddles together" is the
historian's uncharitable expression) as to draw up a
form of apology which Meadowcourt could not sub-
scribe without loss of self-respect. He refused to
sign a document which made him confess and ask
pardon for his crimes, and promise amendment for
the future. Now, if he was to have a degree at all,
it could only be by pleading the King's "Act of
Grace," the amnesty granted by George i. to rebels :
it was thought that this could be made to fit the
case of a Hanoverian who had erred, if at all, from
excess of loyalty. But here again there were diffi-
culties. Meadowcourt must employ a " Proctor of
the Vice-Chancellor's court " to plead his cause.
One " Proctor " after another begged to be excused :
the Vice-Chancellor was "dilatory and evasive,"
and clearly did not wish to have the matter brought
before him : and it was only after much delay and
tergiversation that the " Black Book " was produced,
Meadowcourt's "crimes wiped off by the act of
grace," and his name struck out of the book. Even
now, when he at last stood for his degree, it was
twice "denied," and only granted at a third
application. Thus did he at length escape from
the " hardships, injuries, oppression, and discourage-
ments " which await those (as Amherst says) who
" insolently dare to affront the University by honour-
ing King George and the Protestant succession."

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 249

It certainly looks as if Meadowcourt had had
hard measure. But Tory chroniclers are silent :
and Hearne, who by this time disliked academic
dignitaries almost as much as Whigs, has very little
to say about the matter. Meadowcourt became
Sub- Warden of Merton afterwards : in which
capacity he celebrated January 30th as if it had
been a Gaudy, — being indeed, says Hearne, " a
most vile wretch." This was in 1728.

There can be no reasonable doubt that there
was a strong anti- Hanoverian animus among the
governors of the University, and that the smallness
of the Tory caucus in which power was centralised
made it a very efficient instrument of prejudice.
Theoretically, the initiative rested with the Heads
of Houses: practically an "inner ring" of these
controlled the policy of the University, on the
principle of being as Tory as it dared to be and as
Whig as it must. A letter written in 172 1 (in
reference to the possibility of a contested election
of a Parliamentary representative) deprecates op-
position to the decrees of this oligarchy : Uni-
versities are no places for the application of
democratic principles: "the University electors
will become Mobbish and Popular : and this Sacred
Place, where Peace and Order ought to reign, and
U^tanimity in good Principles ought most eminently
to shine (both for its own Glory and an Example
to others), will be converted into no better than a
Country Corporation: And Strife, Envy, Hatred,

2 50 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

and Contentions will rove about like devouring
Lions : Order and Government will be no more,
but every one will do what is righteous in his own
Eyes. If once the Younger and Unthinking Part
of the University'' (that is, of course, the younger
graduates) "meet with Success against their
Governors, they, like a furious Horse, will too soon
feel their own Strength, and throw off all Sub-
mission, and, consequently, Opposition and Rebellion
will be their first Principle." Moreover, *' 'tis more
than probable that the Squadron of Whigs, if they
go together, will turn " the election. " No one
Body of Men in the Kingdom know better their
own Interest, or pursue it closer, than the Whigs."
As a result, " we may entirely lose the University,
and in Time a Whig may have as good a chance
to succeed as a Tory'' — a terrible contingency
indeed. In this instance the oligarchic influence
is directed more against insubordinate Tories than
against Whigs. The two sitting members of
Parliament, Messrs. Bromley and Clark, were
regarded as "safe" men, while Dr. King, the
favourite of the " younger and unthinking part of
the University," was a thoroughgoing Jacobite :
and the Heads did not wish to embroil themselves
further with the Government. A contemporary
pamphleteer complains that on this occasion "voters"
(especially voters from ultra-Tory Balliol) "who
had the misfortune to be in a state of dependency
. . were treated by the Heads of Houses with

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 251

the same Inhumanity with which great Tyrants
treat their Slaves." Young and ardent Tories then
might suffer on occasion from oppression, nearly as
much as their political opponents : and the hands
of timeserving Heads were heavy on Nonjurors,
as being dangerous and compromising extremists.
Thus Dr. Leigh of Balliol, a prominent Tory, is
accused by Hearne of oppressing Nonjurors and
favouring " Hanoverians and Latitudinarians." In-
deed it is pretty obvious that Mr. J. R. Green
overstates the case by saying that Oxford was a
purgatory for Whigs ; at least, it was a place of
trial for others as well. Whiggism might be un-
fashionable. Coffee-house cliques might sometimes
look askance at a Hanoverian, and the beauties of
Merton and Magdalen Walks might prefer the
society of Tories. It was possible to complain that
Whig poets suffer from inequality of opportunity :

" Faction at Oxford is the Test

To which each Author must submit :
Ev'n Dullness there, in Treason drest,
Clears up and brightens into Wit.

" The Bard reigns Darling of the Crowd
Who dares the Government abuse :
But Quarter never is allowed
To a vile, flattering, Whiggish Muse."

But if Whigs were in a minority, they were active
and militant. They might suffer from petty tyranny
occasionally at the hands of the government of
Oxford : elections might go against them, as the

252 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

writer of a letter to Oxford Tories complains about
1 750 : perhaps Mr. Fysher of Oriel was elected to
the librarianship of the Bodleian because he was, as
Hearne says, a Tory, while his opponent, Mr. Wise,
was a Whig : but they had the Government of
England on their side, and as time went on they
were less and less out of sympathy even with the
" country party," the rank and file of clergy and
squires : such would be the natural effect of
Walpole's regime. The very bitterness of the
Tory Oxonian proves them rather dangerous rivals
than downtrodden enemies. Preferment and the
withholding of it tended to sap the Toryism of the
ruling caucus. Politics went by Colleges : and
Colleges, though predominantly, were by no means
universally, Tory. Among those which long re-
mained faithful to "the old family," St. John's was
"notoriously Jacobite" at least till 1730: so was
Trinity. Balliol, the stronghold of obscurantism
and Conservative principles, was especially con-
nected with the "High Borlase," a Tory wine-club
which met annually on i8th August at the King's
Head Tavern (according to the historian of Balliol)
to drink the health of the Pretender. Dr. Leigh,
elected Master in 1726, — called by Shepilinda "a
little tiny man with a Huge Bagg full of sense
in his Head, and many packets of good Humours
in his pockets," — was the first clergyman to join the
club. Colonel Owen, the Jacobite, took refuge in
Magdalen. But Merton and Wadham were loyal

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 253

to the Government : and it appears from the story
of Ayliffe that there was a Whig minority at New
College. Elections brought these political differences
into prominence. Exeter, always firm for the Whig
interest, was so zealous that at the "famous"
Oxfordshire election of 1754 the College allowed
its back gate to be used by Whig voters ("an un-
lettered hungry mob," according to the Tory Vice-
Chancellor, Dr. Huddesford of Trinity) as a means
of access to the polling-booths, which had been
erected just south of " Canditch," on the site of the
present inner quadrangle : while Balliol and St.
John's, apparently, were keeping open house for
Tories. Christ Church, with its headship in the
gift of Government, could not be expected to re-
main Tory : and it is not surprising to find the
House one of the four Colleges that voted "solid"
for the Whigs in 1750.

If, after the first outbreaks, the political import-
ance of Oxford Toryism steadily diminished, the
governing temper of the University remained anti-
Hanoverian : and in the forties of the century, the
renewed Jacobite danger brought Oxford once more
before the public. The *' Blacow affair" of 1747
illustrates the view which Government thought it
necessary to take of academic disloyalty. To us
the whole thing seems trivial enough. Certain
undergraduates paraded the streets invoking curses
on the House of Hanover and blessings on the
Stuarts, and mobbed a Canon of Windsor who

2 54 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

ventured to reprove their disloyalty : but the Canon
and His Majesty's Government took the incident
very seriously. It is related in detail by Canon
Blacow himself, in a letter addressed to the Tory
Principal of St. Mary's Hall, who had called him
an informer, and compared an ecclesiastical dignitary
to a Delator in the worst days of Tiberius. ** On
Tuesday" (says the writer) "the 23rd day of
February 1 747, I was in a private room at Winter's
Coffee House, near the High Street in Oxford, in
company with several Gentlemen of the University
and an Officer in his Regimental Habit. About
seven o'clock in the evening, a person, belonging
to the Coffee House, came into the Room and told
us, there were a number of Gownsmen at the door,
shouting K — g J — s for ever, Pr — C — s, and
other treasonable words. Upon which I thought
myself doubly bound to take notice of the Treason :
because I had taken the Oath of Abjuration, and
had been invested by the University with the
authority of an Officer in that particular Street."
What with this and "a Mind ever Zealous for
the honour of my Sovereign," the Canon went out
and followed the rioters from the street before the
coffee-house into the High Street: "where they
continued to shout the same treasonable expres-
sions," "almost in one continued Shout." With a
boldness equal to his loyalty, Canon Blacow seized
Mr. Whitmore, one of the rioters, and "insisted
upon carrying him to the Proctor " : but there was

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 255

a rescue, and eventually, '* the Riot still increasing,
after Mr. Whitmore had been forced from me, I
endeavoured to take refuge in Oriel College : which
several Gentlemen, whom I apprehended to belong
to that College, strove to prevent: so that tho' I
enter'd, it was with great difficulty. Having been
some time within the College, I heard the Rioters,
who still continued in the same place, having been
join'd by many other persons (as I apprehend,
about forty), continue the same Treasonable Shouts :
and one part of the Rioters louder than the rest,
in crying D — n K — g G — e and all his Assistants,
and cursing me in particular. Upon which, stepping
to the Gate, I told them, I heard their Treason,
and should certainly bring them to justice." But
it was one against many: for Mr. Harrison, a M.A.
of C.C.C., being requested to assist against the
crowd, only returned an "abusive and insulting"
answer. The Canon was in bodily danger. Mr.
Dawes, one of the disloyal gownsmen, "stripping
to fight, said, / am a man, who dare say, God bless
K — g James the Third: and tell you, my name is
Dawes of St. Marys Hall. I am a man of an
independent fortune, and therefore afraid of no
man." At this moment the Proctor fortunately
appeared on the scene, and took Mr. Dawes ;
" Mr. Luxmore," another rioter, "made his escape :
though the Proctor endeavoured to stop him by
the peremptory command of siste per fidem." All
these matters were duly laid by Canon Blacow

256 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

before the Vice-Chancellor, Dr. John Purnell of
New College. The Vice-Chancellor promised to
have the young men "severely punished" by a
delay of their degrees, and an imposition : but this
did not satisfy the Canon : the Vice-Chancellor, he
said, ought to inquire more closely into the case,
and take the depositions of witnesses. Dr. Purnell
would not do this : and in fact was disposed to
treat the whole matter rather lightly, as a mere
" indiscretion." Not so a judge of the Circuit, who
happened to be in Oxford shortly after this, and
advised the Canon to lay the whole matter before
a Secretary of State : declining, however, to allow
his name to be used. Eventually, as the matter
** was now become the subject of General Conver-
sation through the Kingdom," Government itself
took the initiative, invited the Canon to give "a
particular account of the Treasonable Riot," and
as a result ordered a prosecution in the King's
Bench against Messrs. Whitmore, Dawes, and
Luxmore. One was acquitted, the other two were
punished with excessive severity : being, says the
historian of Balliol, " condemned to be imprisoned
for two years, to find security for their good
behaviour for seven years, and to go round im-
mediately to all the Courts in Westminster Hall,
with a paper on their foreheads detailing the
particulars of their offence." The sentence seems
disproportionate to a crime which looks very like
a mere schoolboy extravagance : but in 1 747 the

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 257

Government was naturally enough in a bad
temper.

Nor was anti- Hanoverian spirit inactive among
the Dons. It was two years later (in April 1749)
that Dr. William King, Principal of St. Mary Hall,
made his celebrated Latin speech in the Sheldonian
Theatre on the occasion of the dedication of the Rad-
cliffe Library — an oration in which there is a good
deal about Dr. Radcliffe but a great deal more
about the corruption of manners and the decay of
Universities under the domination of the House
of Brunswick. What gained it much celebrity at
the time was its conclusion, which consists of a
series of paragraphs each beginning with Redeat
(Restore !), a word of which Dr. King and every
one who heard him knew perfectly well the political
signification — " Restore at the same time, him the
great genius of Britain (whether he is the Messenger
of the very Spirit of God), the firmest guard of
Liberty and Religion : and let him banish into
Exile (into Perpetual Exile) from among our
countrymen all barbarous Wars, Slaughters,
Rapines, Years of Pestilence, haughty Usurpations "
(such as those of the Hanoverian Kings), " in-
famous Informers" (obviously. Canon Blacow) "and
every Evil. Restore and prosper him, that the
Commonwealth may revive, Faith be recall'd,
Peace established. Laws ordained, just, honest,
salutary, useful Laws, to deter the Abandoned,
restrain Armies, favour the Learned, spare the
17

258 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Imprudent, relieve the Poor, delight all," — and so
forth. It will be observed that the above version
(published by one who is apparently an ardent
admirer of Dr. King and his principles) makes the
Doctor more openly Jacobite than his Latin words
suggest : all that King says, for instance, is '' Redeat
magnus ille genius BritannicB,^' which of course does
not necessarily point to a living man : but "He the
great genius of Britain" is a very different thing.
However, there was never any doubt, among the
crowded audience in the Theatre or anywhere else,
what the meaning of Redeat was : and the orator
had to endure many hard knocks from contempor-
ary Whiggism, — criticism which he really enjoyed,
having been a Tory controversialist from his youth
up. What with Canon Blacow, and John Burton
of Corpus Christi, Fellow of Eton " (Jaccus
Etonensis," as King calls him), a respectable Whig,
whose rather ponderous attempts to reform King
by reproof are treated by the latter in a spirit of
entire levity, the Principal of St. Mary Hall must
have had his hands full in these days. Oxford
rang with the echoes of the " Redeat " speech, and
pamphlets and letters "arising out of" the speech,
denunciatory, explanatory, apologetic, — Burton
lashing King, and King travestying Burton.
These relics of the fray lie in dusty corners of the
Bodleian. But even Dr. King's ironic humour and
lightness of touch — singular in an age when the
rapier was less often the weapon of controversy

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 259

than the sledge-hammer — can hardly make such
ancient quarrels real and interesting to modern
readers.

One concludes from the literature of 1749-50
that Oxford could hardly be as yet called well-
affected to the Hanoverian dynasty. The author
of a letter to the Oxford Tories in 1750 remonstrates
with the Dons for being permanently "agin the
Government." " Suppose on a fair scrutiny into
the conduct of the leaders of your party, for more
than thirty years last past, it shall appear that no
one Minister, no one Measure of Government has
obtained your approbation, or escaped your dis-
pleasure, can you, in such case, expect that the
world should have such partiality for your senti-
ments, as to pronounce that the Rulers of Great
Britain are always wrong, and the Rulers of Oxford
always right? ... If in the Election of Members
into your several Societies (with an exception to two
or at most three of your Colleges) such candidates
for your favour, as labour under suspicion of any
zeal for the Government, have often been for that
reason alone rejected, when their learning was un-
questionable, and their morals without a blemish : —
And if in certain publick elections, made by the
whole body of the University, the first point
resolved by the ruling party hath been 'that the
vote of every Whig elector should be fruitless ' : it
is to be feared that the world, unacquainted with
your local policy, may be apt to impute so extra-

26o OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

ordinary a procedure to the absence of a proper
zeal for the Government in that ruling party. — And
lastly, the Press has furnished the world with evi-
dence that one academick (a gentleman of confessed
learning, a tutor of acknowledged abilities, a citizen
in high and deserved esteem for his probity, his
honour, his laudable conduct in moral and social
life) has lately been treated as ill as, by the little
low arts of ridicule and malevolence, he could be
treated : but for what reason ? why truly because
this tutor had the conscience and courage to publish
a Lecture of Loyalty^ and to oblige every friend to
Great Britain with a rational and cogent defence of
its present constitution in Church and State." Later,
the pamphleteer is like all Whigs of the day,
shocked at Dr. King's "Redeat" speech: and
cannot withhold an intimation of his concern "that
prevalent parts and masterly talents should at any
time or on any occasion be disgraced by the society
of Slander y Obloquy, Faction, Sedition : and that a
Head, well-instructed, is not always attended by a
benevolent Heart. Spleen and malevolence in an
able writer, an admired speaker, are to be lamented
as a publick misfortune." In fact Dr. King had
a wicked wit, and those who met him in con-
troversy received a good deal more than they gave.
It was only left to them to lament the prostitution
of his talents.

These brawls and speeches and pamphleteerings
cannot be said exactly to mark a recrudescence of I

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 261

political animus. The bitterness was always there :
only occasion brought it to the surface. But for
twenty years before this Oxford Jacobitism or
Toryism (George i.'s close alliance with the Whigs
did much to turn Tories into Jacobites) had been
more and more an affair of occasional street
shoutings, common-room squabbles, toastings of
the " King over the water." It was a day of small
things. The Heads, realising the need of outward
conformity, had taken public notice of a sermon
preached by Mr. Coningsby in 1726, of which the
tone was held to be disloyal: and in 1727 an
address of Convocation had protested (not, it is
true, without much opposition) the " unshaken
loyalty of the University," and its "utmost detesta-
tion of all open or secret attempts against your
Government " : the irreconcilables were in a
minority, most of the University being, as Hearne
says, " infatuated " — or otherwise, men of prudence.
Probably Dr. Bradshaw, Dean of Christ Church
and Bishop of Bristol, said truly that the Univer-
sity only showed its loyalty out of a principle
of interest. Satisfied, however, with such per-
functory assurances, the Whig Government patched
up a truce with the University of Oxford : both
parties, as it were, compromised matters on a basis
of mutual dislike. It was tolerably clear that
neither had really much, under ordinary circum-
stances, to fear from the other — on the one side
because the will, and on the other because the

262 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

power to hurt was absent. A period of quiescence
succeeds to the turbulence of the early century —
but it is the quiescence, so far as the rank and file
of Tory Dons is concerned, of sullen and silent
acrimony. Oxford Jacobites were all the more
firmly rooted in their creed after 1720, because the
creed was only an academic principle, no longer
likely to bring them into practical contact with
inconvenient consequences. During the reign of
Anne the practical problem must have been a
standing difficulty as long as there was any real
chance of James iii.'s accession. As a Tory,
I defend the Protestant faith : how then can I
admit a Roman Catholic sovereign ? This must
have made Whigs of many lukewarm Tories.

But once George i. was firmly established
on the throne, the situation changed. Nothing
was less probable than a Stuart restoration : the
logical dilemma of the Jacobite High Churchman
was not likely, as before, to take a practical form :
and Tories might hate the Hanoverian regime not
only with less fear of punishment (as the Govern-
ment ceased to anticipate serious danger from the
Universities), but without arriere pensde as to the
very embarrassing results of a Jacobite success.
Having thus full liberty to hate it, they did so :
and have incurred, therefore, much subsequent
censure from reasonable men. These call Oxford
Jacobitism the "childish display of impotent re-
sentment." The late Mr. J. R. Green (in whose

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 263

eyes no Oxford Tory could do right) uses a simile
more lively than pleasing : "It may be," he writes,
*' that like the monks who, every day during the
warm season, shake the vermin from their habits
into a dungeon beneath, the Hanoverian statesmen
were glad to brush off the prejudices and bigotries
which, if accumulated elsewhere, might have given
them so much trouble, into this antiquated re-
ceptacle, and to leave it untouched, as the monks
left theirs untouched — * La Pulciara ' — the Fleaery
of England ! " Surely the Jacobite spirit deserves
a little less unsympathetic and contemptuous treat-
ment. The Tories had, at Oxford, the traditions
of the University and the N^xy genius loci on their
side : and apart from mere sentiment — yet even this
sometimes deserves consideration — many thoughtful
Oxonians must have seen but little in Georgian
England to compel enthusiasm. There was little
to choose between Caroline and Georgian courts in
the matter of morality. For the nation in general,
the second quarter of the eighteenth century
touched the nadir of gross and unashamed
materialism. Seldom has there been so little
public spirit. " The nation," says Mr. Lecky,
"gradually sank into a condition of selfish apathy."
Patronage of literature had declined. A kind of
"common sense" mastered Church and State:
Christianity had been " silently converted into a
mere system of elevated morality," and in politics
every man had his price. Must those be stamped

264 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

as merely antiquated bigots who in an age freer
than most from ideals and illusions could not quite
blame the stormier enthusiasms and passions and
livelier hopes of their predecessors, but felt that
something was lost under the early Hanoverians ?
There must have been many, and especially at
Oxford, who did sincerely and not altogether un-
reasonably look back to the years of passionate
loyalties and devotions, — the years when men could
still die with " vain faith, and courage vain," for a
cause that history was to call impossible. Only
very good Whigs could believe that the Elector
of Hanover had brought over the millennium..
Justifiably or not, Oxford had no love for the two
first Georges. Time alone could cure the trouble :
it was the growing personal popularity of the
dynasty which eventually converted the country,
and thereby (perhaps, as usual, a little more slowly)
the University. By the time of George iii.'s
accession Oxford was ready enough to find an
excuse for loyalty : and the end of the long Whig
domination in politics made loyalty easy and
consistent.

For Whig and Tory alike the note of this
particular period is prejudice embittered by political
opposition. To the Oxford Tory, taking his stand
on " High Church principles," everything was
anathema which savoured of Puritanism, — even
when the dangerous movement in the direction
of practical morality was (as one might suppose)

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 265

compensated for by its concurrent insistence on
ritual observance. To the Oxford Whig everything
was suspect which tended to disturb the status quo
— the "recent happy settlement" in Church and
State. Apart from the fact that the reign of
George 11. was not a period that especially favoured
works of supererogation, — doers of such being liable
to the damning imputation of " Enthusiasm," — the
political animosities of the early Georgian era are
not remotely related to the religious intolerance
which encountered the first beginnings of Methodism
at Oxford. It would be tempting to endeavour to
find a similarity between the Oxford Movements of
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries : and this
much may at least be said, that they both originate
in periods of varying degrees of academic torpor,
and both precede an epoch of changed manners and
ideas. But with this very slight and superficial
resemblance the parallel ends. An ecclesiastical
revival, based on a new or restored conception of
the Church, appealing to the historic sense and the
speculative intellect, has nothing in common with
such a movement as that which was organised by
John and Charles Wesley in 1729 — a movement
purely pietistic, aiming at the reformation of the
individual by a stricter code of religious observance :
in its essence, as Mr. Brodrick describes it, "not
devotional but practical, not the propagation of a
new creed, but the moral salvation of human souls."
It was a protest partly against the loose living which

266 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

had been so prevalent in the years succeeding the
Restoration, and which had been only in part
reformed by the sporadically resolute government
of the early years of the succeeding century : and
partly against the spirit which masked Rationalism
or Deism or sheer indifference under a brave show
of fidelity to High Church principles. Such were
the tendencies against which the earliest Methodists,
disciples first of the Wesleys and later of George
Whitefield, had to contend. The means they
employed were what most ages would have called
purely beneficent : never, one might have supposed,
did any revival lay itself so little open to adverse
criticism. There was no vulgarity, no sensational
appeal to the emotions of large and excitable
audiences — in Oxford, at any rate. All that the
Methodists did was to encourage each other to
virtuous living and good works. They were dili-
gent in religious observance : they fasted, with the
over-asceticism of a new enthusiasm : they started
schools for the poor, they relieved the sick, they
visited prisoners in gaol. And from first to last,
during the six years intervening between John
Wesley's return to Oxford and the subsequent
mission to Georgia in 1735, they were consistently
and uninterruptedly derided, abused, even punished.
Oxford of that day was stony ground indeed : never
had prophets less honour in their own country. The
mass of undergraduate opinion would have none of
Methodism. This is perhaps not so remarkable :

JOHN WESLEY

FROM AN ENGRAVING BY J. FABER AFTER THE PAINTING BY J. WILLIAMS

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 267

obvious differences in manner of life, unsociability,
and want of care about such outward matters as
dress, are always unpopular : and the revivalists
were eccentric on principle. Whitefield, servitor at
Pembroke and ex-drawer at his father's inn, says
of himself, " I fasted twice a week. My apparel
was mean. I thought it unbecoming a penitent to
have his hair powdered. I wore woollen gloves, a
patched gown, and dirty shoes." These are serious
matters in the eyes of academic youth : yet with all
allowances made, it is, as Canon Overton writes,
" difficult to conceive " how it should have been
possible for Whitefield to write of having seen the
young men called Methodists go through a ridi-
culing crowd to receive the Holy Eucharist at St.
Mary's. Nor was this all. Perhaps we should not
judge a learned University by its foolish youth.
But the attitude of the authorities towards a wholly
blameless and virtuous movement is really not
explainable : it seems to justify all the hard things
that have been said of the century. " The seniors
of Christ Church," writes Mr. Brodrick, "held a
meeting to consider what could be done against
them " (the Methodists). At Lincoln College, the
Rector and Fellows showed determined hostility to
them : the Master of Pembroke threatened to expel
Whitefield "unless he gave up visiting" : Whitefield's
tutor at Pembroke, indeed, was charitable enough
to condone his pupil's failings on the supposition
that he was mad. The charity of grown men and

268 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

instructors of youth could no farther go. But in
the eyes of academic zealots for High Church
principles, Whitefield and the Wesleys — founding
no heresy, subverting no system, only doing good —
were actually dangerous : probably it was the fear
of Puritanism, the old enemy : probably also it was
the dislike, innate in that century, of everything
excessive and unconventional. "It is the object
of a good gendarmerie," says a character in About's
Homme a P Oreille Cassde, "to see that nothing
unusual happens in the locality." The ideals of
Heads of Colleges in 1730 were often those of the
French gendarme. Their prejudice was based on
disciplinary grounds : and as to liberality of feeling,
they were of their age. It will be remembered that
only sixteen years had elapsed since the Schism Act,
designed to deprive Dissenters of their own schools,
was supported by the father of John and Charles
Wesley. Some Churchmen, at any rate, took more
charitable views of the activity of Wesley's disciples :
Whitefield records the warm approval which they
received from an Oxford parish clergyman : " God
bless you," he said : "I wish we had more such
young curates." But this was not the temper of
undergraduate Oxford, nor of its pastors and
masters, who between them practically laughed
and bullied Methodism out of existence within their
realm. The hostility of Oxford to the Wesleyan
movement in its fully-developed activity is easy
enough to understand. It is less easy at first sight

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 269

to account for the intolerance of 1730: yet it was
not out of keeping with the narrow formalism and
party bitterness of that rather inexcusable period.

When John Wesley returned from Georgia,
he found hardly a congregation to preach to, and
his adherents, never numerous, had dwindled to the
merest handful. But, in the country in general,
Methodism grew and developed, gradually taking
shape as a movement not within but outside the
Anglican Church : the cleavage between it and
orthodox Anglicanism grew wider : and nowhere,
naturally, was the breach more definite than at
Oxford, that home of sound High Church doctrine.
Thus, forty years later, the very small Dissenting
minority which ventured within the sacred precincts
met with very rough handling. Dissent by this
time was " the enemy " : " the folly of Methodism,"
wrote a high academic official, "leads either to
madness or infidelity." In 1768 the Vice-
Chancellor, Durell, was invited by a tutor of St.
Edmund Hall to hold a ** Visitation " for the
purpose of pronouncing judgment on six students
of that society accused of Methodism and certain
concomitant vices : they had preached in conven-
ticles : they held dangerous views on Justification
by Faith : several of them were low-born persons,
quite out of their element in the University of
Oxford. In three cases the charge of illiteracy
and inability to perform the exercises of the Hall
was thrown in as a makeweight : but as all,

2 70 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

illiterate and otherwise, were formally expelled,
it is clear that the real gravamen was a religious
or a social offence rather than an intellectual
failing. This is made pretty clear by the notes
taken during the trial by Dr. Nowell, the Public
Orator and Principal of St. Mary's Hall. For
instance, it is noted of James Matthews : " Accused
that he was brought up to the trade of a weaver —
that he had kept a taphouse — confessed. — Accused
that he is totally ignorant of the Greek and Latin
languages : which appeared by his declining all
examination. — Said that he had been under the
tuition of two clergymen for five years, viz. Mr.
Davies and Newton : though it did not appear
that he had during that time made any proficiency
in learning — was about thirty years old — accused
of being a reputed Methodist by the evidence of
Mr. Atkins, formerly of Queen's College — that he
was assistant to Mr. Davies a reputed Methodist,
that he was instructed by Mr. Fletcher a reputed
Methodist, — that he maintained the necessity of
the sensible impulse of the Holy Spirit — that he
entered himself of Edmund- Hall, with a design
to get into holy Orders, for which he had offered
himself a candidate, though he still continues to
be wholly illiterate, and incapable of doing the
exercises of the Hall — proved. — That he had
frequented illicit conventicles held in a private
house in Oxford — confessed. He produced two
testimonials, one vouched by the Bishop of Litch-

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 271

field and Coventry, the other by the Bishop of
Worcester." It is noted of Thomas Jones that
he was "Accused that he had been brought up
to the trade of a barber, which he had followed
very lately — confessed. — Had made a very small
proficiency in the Greek and Latin languages — was
two years studying, and still incapable of perform-
ing the statutable exercises of the Hall — that he
had been at the meetinors at Mr. Durbrido^e's —
that he had expounded the Scriptures to a mixed
congregation at Wheaton Aston, though not in
holy Orders, and prayed extempore. All this he
confessed. He urged in his defence that he had
asked his Tutor whether he thought it wrong for
him to pray or instruct in a private family, and
that his Tutor answered, he did not, which he
said was the reason of his continuing to do it."
The sentence pronounced on one of the victims
may serve as a sample : ex uno disce omnes. "It
having also appeared to me that Benjamin Kay of
the said Hall, by his own confession, had fre-
quented illicit conventicles in a private house in
this town : where he had heard extempore prayers
frequently offered up by one Hewett, a stay-maker.
Moreover, it having been proved by sufficient
evidence that he held methodistical principles : viz.
the doctrine of absolute election : that the Spirit
of God works irresistibly : that once a child of God
always a child of God : that he had endeavoured to
instil the same principles into others, and exhorted

272 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

them to continue stedfastly in them against all
opposition. — Therefore, I, D. Durell, by virtue of
my visitatorial power, and with the advice and
opinion of each and every one of my assessors, the
reverend persons before mentioned, do expel the
said Benjamin Kay from the said Hall, and hereby
pronounce him also expelled."

It was not to be expected that severe measures
like this would pass without comment. The whole
matter was argued at great length. Dr. T. Nowell
defends the action of the University authorities on
the ground that the six unfortunates had "attended
illicit conventicles prohibited by the Statutes of the
University." " Let me then again repeat," he says,
" what I have before declared, that the legal or
statutable cause of their expulsion was their
having attended illicit conventicles, prohibited

BY the statutes OF THE UNIVERSITY. Most of

them had indeed aggravated this crime, by assuming
to themselves the character of preachers in such
illicit conventicles, and one of them had even dared
to officiate as a clergyman in a parish church."
No doubt a University has a technical right to
punish disobedience to the letter of its Statutes :
even by expulsion, usually regarded as the penalty
of very gross offences. The Public Orator is more
questionable when he goes on to say that "a
farther aggravation of their crime was that they
were most of them illiterate mechanics, who had
intruded themselves into the University, for which

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 273

they were neither designed nor quaHfied : and what
still added to the propriety and expediency of
putting the statute in force against them was their
notorious connexion with the methodists, both in
principles and practice : and in this view their
tenets were considered, together with the very
indecent manner in which they broached them
before their tutor : who had reason to complain of
them as Archbishop Whitgift did, *of those new-
fangled and factious sectaries, whose endeavour is
to make divisions wherever they come.'" These
are arguments which hardly appeal to the sym-
pathies of posterity : and in any case, if low birth
or sordid occupation or "connexion with the
Methodists " might prevent a candidate from gain-
ing admission to an academic foundation, it is
hardly just that he should be expelled for such
reasons when he is there. The author of Pietas
Oxomensts (Sir R. Hill) has no difficulty in showing
the absurdity of expelling for a belief in Justification
by Faith, while gross vices are ignored or condoned.
Such attacks or apologies could not fail to kindle
the fires of theological controversy : and both sides
are copious. Ponderous pamphleteers interpret the
Articles of the Church, and the imposing authority
of Laud, Hammond, Bull, and Tillotson is matched
against the august names of Hooker, Whitgift,
Hutton, and Jewel. JVon nostrum est tantas
componere lites. What is sufficiently clear is that
the academic authorities of 1768 were animated by
18

274 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

a narrow, exclusive and persecuting temper (" though
Bonner and Gardiner are no more," says the author
of Pietas Oxoniensis, "yet their spirit and dis-
position are certainly risen from the dead "), and
that social as well as religious intolerance was

rampant.

" Rejoice, ye sons of Papal Rome,"

says the London Chronicle, —

" No longer hide the head,
Mary's blest days are come again,
And Bonner from the dead.

" So drink, ye jovial souls, and swear,
And all shall then go well :
But O take heed of Hymns and Prayer,
These cry aloud— EXPEL."

The Printer of the London Chronicle is requested
to " insert the following lines in his most useful and
candid paper": "On some Expulsions from E —

H — , O d, of certain Gentlemen for holding the

doctrines of Election, Perseverance, Justification by
Faith alone, man's natural impotency to good, and
the efficacious influence of the Spirit :

" Where Cranmer died, where Ridley bled.
Martyrs for truth sincere.
See Cranmer's faith, and Ridley's hope,
Thrust out and martyr'd here ! "

The Public Advertiser prints the following
** Dialogue between a Doctor and a Proctor " :

" Doctor
All hail, my good Friend ! we have carried the day,
And, by fair means or foul, have sent them away.

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 275

Proctor
This prating of Faith and Regeneration
Is spreading its Poison all over the Nation.

Doctor
I ne'er knew the like since I've been a Doctor.

Proctor
Indeed, Sir, nor I, since I've been a Proctor.

Doctor
Bear Witness, my Friend, what pains I have taken :
I've preach'd, foam'd, and stamp'd till the Pulpit has shaken.

Proctor
Towards all of this Way no mercy I show,
For I fear'd all along whereunto it would grow.

Doctor
For Virtue and Works what a Hero I've been,
As well by my Writing as Preaching is seen.

Proctor
Come, come, my good Friend, there is nobody by.
Let us own the plain Truth between you and I :
We talk and we preach of good Works, it is true :
We talk and we preach, but leave others to do :
Against true Gospel Zeal it is that we fight.
For we must be wrong if these young Men are right."

Whatever the Wesleys may have done towards
reformation of morals, they certainly had not
broadened the sympathies of Oxford Heads of
Houses : even though the Principal of the Hall
himself pleaded, against his Tutor, for the acquittal
and retention of the students. Authority had in-
deed the approval of Dr. Johnson. "They" (the
students) "were examined," said the lexicographer,

2 76 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

*' and found to be mighty ignorant fellows." " But,"
said Bos well, **was it not hard to expel them? for
I am told they were good beings." " I believe,"
replied Johnson, "that they might be good beings,
but they were not fit to be in the University of
Oxford. A cow is a very good animal in the field,
but we turn her out of a garden." The Doctor's
defence of the Heads does not hold water. They
themselves make Methodism, and not ignorance, the
primary ground for expulsion. Time did nothing
to alleviate prejudice : and in 1779, when a bill was
proposed for the further relief of Protestant Dis-
senting ministers and schoolmasters, it was resisted
by a formal protest from the Chancellor, Masters,
and Scholars of the University.

Perhaps the contumelious treatment of Wesley's
followers in 1730 may be partly explained as an
act of ill-tempered retaliation. Oxford had suffered
at the hands of the Whigs, — at least, had received
few benefits from them, — and to maltreat whatever
savoured of Puritanism was at once agreeable to
the temper of the time and an act of hostility to
the party which was inclined to show some tolera-
tion of Dissenters. But the Dons who expelled
Methodists in 1768 had no such shadow of justifica-
tion. They did it, as we have seen, quite as much
out of mere gentility and respectability as religious
prejudice (for the Oxford of that day was nothing
if not respectable : the University had become a
select seminary for young gentlemen, soliciting as

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 277

such the patronage of Government) : there was no
political animus to justify the act. Forty years'
wandering in the wilderness of opposition had
brought the "Jacobite capital" at last to the promised
land of reconciliation with the powers that be :
the Encaenia of 1763, which celebrated the con-
clusion of peace after the Seven Years' War, cele-
brated also the treaty of peace between Oxford
and the House of Hanover. In April of that year
the loyal address of Convocation to George iii.
received a very cordial answer : "It is highly
acceptable to me," says His Majesty, " to receive
your warm congratulations on the re-establishment
of the Publick Tranquillity : an event so interesting
to humanity, so peculiarly connected to the advance-
ment of Religion and the improvement of Letters.
Your zealous and unwearied attention to these great
and important objects of your care and duty, justly
entitle you to my continuance and constant pro-
tection." Evidently we have travelled a long way
from the days when the Universities were homes
of disloyalty and "cages of unclean birds"! But
now a Tory administration was at last in power :
and even the aged Principal of St. Mary Hall, the
secretary of Ormond and Arran, the very central
figure of Oxford Toryism for forty years, the
deliverer of the celebrated Jacobite " Redeat "
address, — even Dr. King himself could without
theoretical inconsistency appear at the Encaenia
as the eulogist of Government, and "in a most

278 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

spirited and elegant oration . . . enlarge on the
salutary effects arising from a general peace."
Thus the hatchet was buried : as Terrce Filius
said in the same year, the Tories were all at Court
and Oxonians were made bishops. Twenty-two
years later, "Their Majesties and the Royal
Offspring" visited Oxford from Nuneham, spending
a few hours of a September day in the town and
seeing the sights. They held a kind of extempor-
ised levee in the Theatre, where Dr. Hayes played
the organ while the Vice-Chancellor and Proctors
and Heads of Houses "kissed hands." All was
loyalty and propriety of demeanour. " We have
the Happiness to find," says the Oxford Journal,
" that the Decency of the Populace, and great
Attention of all other classes of the Inhabitants,
were highly pleasing." In August of the next
year the visit was repeated : Miss Burney, who
was of the party as a maid of honour, gives
a lively description of the day — how the maids
of honour were entertained with surreptitious
refreshments in Christ Church Hall, and how
Dons " kissed hands " in the Theatre with more
loyalty than grace. Anyhow, there was loyalty
in plenty. Oxford had entered upon that period
of "dull uninterrupted sycophancy" which, accord-
ing to Mr. J. R. Green, was even worse than
the Jacobitism which he cannot condemn too
strongly. Indeed, an Oxford Tory fares hardly
at the hands of Liberal historians. He is a

POLITICS AND PERSECUTIONS 279

fool when he rebels, and a sycophant when he
submits.

These not very important events mark the
beginning of one of the peacefulest and not the
least useful stages of academic history. During
the first few decades of the nineteenth century,
Oxford, if not yet much troubled by questionings
about the proper relation of Universities to the
Nation, was at least doing its best to be "eminently
respectable" and to achieve some useful internal
reforms : representing, worthily enough, the educa-
tional ideals of the upper classes whom alone it
educated : and, as its special business, making the
legend of the " Hero as undergraduate," the
champion of the Schools and the River, who has
been consecrated by literature and will probably
survive as the typical Oxford Man of the nineteenth
century. But later years brought all the new
social and intellectual problems of modern Oxford,
for which we have been variously helped or handi-
capped by the tradition of the eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries. The former established
College government on a firm basis of good order,
the latter invented the means of giving average
men an object to work for : so far, so good : but
the years of internal reform had also turned the
University into a close corporation, a preserve for
only one section of English society. With the
assimilation in tastes and habits of the "upper"
and "upper middle" classes, the two between them

2 8o OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

had appropriated Oxford : and while the added
picturesqueness of College life and its closer
fraternity and esprit de corps were no doubt good
things in themselves, yet the result has been that
in the long nineteenth century battle between
privilege and democracy, Oxford has sometimes
been on the wrong — that is, the losing — side.
Until Colleges change themselves and their relation
to the University, indeed until the conditions of
English society are radically altered, it does not yet
appear how Oxford is going to be "truly national."
As long as there are class distinctions in England,
so long will Universities fail to satisfy now one
and now another section of public opinion. This,
at least, is to their credit, — that they fail to
satisfy themselves.

APPENDIX

HEADS OF COLLEGES AND HALLS DURING
THE CENTURY

\The numerals indicate the date of election.
V.-C.= Vice- Chancellor]

Masters of University. Arthur Charlett, 1692, a capable and
energetic master, but overbearing and quarrelsome. Thomas
Cockman, 1722 (elected and ultimately confirmed by the
Crown after much controversy), a good scholar, said to
have been " revered as a father and loved as a brother " in
his College. John Browne, 1745, V.-C. 1750-53; Arch-
deacon of Northampton. Nathan Wetherell, 1764, V.-C.
1768-72, "a befitting Master for the now flourishing
society": Dean of Hereford, 1800.

Masters of Balliol: Roger Mander, 1687. John Baron, 1704,
V.-C. 1 71 5-18, "a stalwart Whig." Joseph Hunt, 1721.
Theophilus Leigh, 1726, V.-C. 1738-41, a strong Tory.
John Davey, 1785. John Parsons, 1798, V.-C. 1807-10, a
Tory in politics, but "in academic matters a consistent
Liberal": one of the framers of the New Examination
Statute; Bishop of Peterborough, 1813.

Wardens of Merton : Richard Lydall, 1693. Edmund Martin,
1704. John Holland, 1709, a strong Whig. Robert
Wyntle, 1734. John Robinson, 1750. Henry Barton,
1759. Scrope Berdmore, 1790, V.-C. 1796-97.

a8x

2 82 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Rectors of Exeter: William Paynter, i6go, V.-C. 1 698-1 700.
Matthew Hole, 17 16. John Conybeare, 1730, "a strenuous
reformer" in Exeter. Joseph Attwell, 1733, a scholar and
man of science : F.R.S. James Edgcumbe, 1737. Francis
Webber, 1750: Dean of Hereford, 1756. Thomas Bray,
1 77 1. Thomas Stinton, 1785. Henry Richards, 1797,
V.-C. 1806-7.

Provosts of Oriel: George Royse, 1691, "reckoned a good
florid preacher": Dean of Bristol, 1694. George Carter,
1708, "a worthy, ingenious, sober gentleman, and a good
scholar." Walter Hodges, 1729, V.-C. 1741-44, "a good
scholar." Chardin Musgrave, 1757. John Clarke, 1768.
John Eveleigh, 1781 : the chief author of the New Examina-
tion statute.

Provosts of Queen! s: Timothy Halton, 1677. William Lancaster,
1704, V.-C. 1706-10, "adorned with every grace " (Tickell);
" That old Knave " (Hearne). John Gibson, 1 7 1 7. Joseph
Smith, 1730. Joseph Browne, 1756, V.-C. 1759-65. Thomas
Fothergill, 1767, V.-C. 1772-76. Septimus Collinson, 1796.

Wardens of New College: Richard Traffics, 1701. Thomas
Braithwaite, 1703, V.-C. 1710-12. John Cobb, 1712. John
Dobson, 1720. Henry Bigg, 1725. John Coxed, 1730.
John Purnell, 1740, V.-C. 1750-53. Thomas Hayward,
1764. John Oglander, 1768. Samuel Gauntlett, 1794.

Rectors of Lincoln : Fitzherbert Adams, 1685, V.-C. 1695-97.
John Morley, 17 19. Euseby Isham, 1731, V.-C. 1744,
Richard Hutchins, 1755, "two excellent Rectors." Charles
Mortimer, 1781. John Homer, 1784. Edward Tatham,
1792, "a shrewd and vigorous man," but unduly combative.

Wardens' of All Souls': Hon. Leopold William Finch, 1687.
Bernard Gardiner, 1702, V.-C. 17 12-15, "hardworking and
conscientious," but tactless and quarrelsome. Stephen
Niblett, 1726, V.-C. 1735-38. Hon. John Tracy, 1766.
Edmund Isham, 1793, V.-C. 1797-98.

APPENDIX 283

Presidents of Magdalen: John Rogers, 1701, Thomas Bayley,
1703. Joseph Harwar, 1706, Edward Butler, 1722, V.-C.
1728-32: Burgess of the University, 1737-45: a man for
whom "political life seems to have had more attraction
than academic affairs," but whose "benefactions to the
College were numerous and large." Thomas Jenner, 1745.
George Home, 1768, V.-C. 1776-80, a President of "good
Uterary ability " and " studious and devout life " : Dean of
Canterbury, 1781 ; Bishop of Norwich, 1790. Martin Joseph
Routh, 1 791, well known as a Platonist, and still better for
his contributions to theological and patristic scholarship :
President till 1854.

Principals of Brasenose '. John Meare, 1681, afterwards Professor
of Music at Gresham College. Robert Shippen, 17 10,
V.-C. 1718-23. Francis Yarborough, 1 745. William Gwyn,
1770. Ralph Cawley, 1770. Thomas Barker, 1777.
William Cleaver, 1785.

Presidents of Corpus Christi: Thomas Turner, 1688, who "ruled
the College well, wisely, and peaceably " : Canon and Pre-
centor of St. Paul's. Stephen Hurman, 17 14 (resigned
the day after his election). Basil Kennett, 17 14, "a good-
natured, modest, humble, and learned man." John Mather,
1 7 15, V.-C. 1723-28, an "Honest" man. Thomas
Randolph, 1748, V.-C. 1756-59, a learned theologian:
Archdeacon of Oxford, 1 767 ; Margaret Professor of Divinity,
1768. John Cooke, 1783, V.-C. 1788-92: "one of the
respectable, amiable, dignified Heads of the period, without
any special aptitude for literature or education."

Deufis of Christ Church : Henry Aldrich, 1689, V.-C. 1692-95 ;
possessed of "not only high and varied attainments" (in
logic, chemistry, music, history, and architecture), "but a
singular charm of character." Francis Atterbury, 1711,
known at Oxford as a great preacher and orator, but violent
and self-assertive. George Smalridge, 17 13, a learned and
amiable Dean. Hugh Boulter, 1719: 1724, Primate of

284 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Ireland, and distinguished there for his charity to the poor.
William Bradshaw, 1724: Bishop of Bristol, 1724. John
Conybeare, 1733: till then Rector of Exeter, "a learned
theologian and an active ruler"; Bishop of Bristol, 1751.
David Gregory, 1756, the first Professor of Modern History
and Languages. William Markham, 1767, "a brilliant
scholar": Dean of Rochester, 1765; Bishop of Chester,
1771; Archbishop of York, 1776. Lewis Bagot, 1777,
successively Bishop of Bristol, Norwich, and St. Asaph, "a
mild, amiable, and conscientious prelate." Cyril Jackson,
1783, who "brought to the office of Dean not only high
intellectual attainments, but those incommunicable gifts
which go to make a great ruler."

Presidents of Trinity. Ralph Bathurst, 1664, "a man of great
ability and energy," and a great benefactor to the College :
Dean of Wells, 1670. Thomas Sykes, 1704, "an Honest
Man and a learned Divine " : Margaret Professor of Divinity,
1691. William Dobson, 1706, also "an Honest Man and a
good Scholar." George Huddesford, 1731, V.-C. 1753-56.
Joseph Chapman, 1776, V.-C. 1784-88.

Presidents ofSt.John^s: William Delaune, 1698, V.-C. 1702-6,
" a man of Parts and Learning " (Hearne) : Margaret
Professor of Divinity, 17 15. William Holmes, 1728, V.-C.
1732-35: Regius Professor of Modern History. William
Derham, 1748. William Walker, 1757: Principal of New
Inn Hall. Thomas Fry, 1757. Samuel Dennis, 1772,
V.-C. 1780-84. Michael Marlow, 1795.

Principals of Jesus: Jonathan Edwards, 1686, "a keen con-
troversialist." John Wynne, 171 2: Bishop of St. Asaph,
T713. William Jones, 1720. Eubule Thelwall, 1725.
Thomas Pardo, 1727. Humphrey Owen, 1763, "a pro-
nounced Jacobite " : Bodley's Librarian since 1747. Joseph
Hoare, 1768, "the first married Principal."

Wardens of Wadham: Thomas Dunster, 1689, a strong Whig.
William Baker, 17 19: Bishop of Bangor, 1723; afterwards

APPENDIX 285

Bishop of Norwich. Robert Thistlethwayt, 1724. Samuel
Lisle, 1739 ; Bishop of St. Asaph, 1744. George Wyndham,

1744. James Gerard, 1777. John Wills, 1783, V.-C.
1792-96.

Masters of Pembroke: John Hall, 1664, a strong low Church-
man and Whig: Margaret Professor of Divinity, 1676;
Bishop of Bristol, 1691. Colwell Brickenden, 17 10, "an
Honest Man," but " good for little " (Hearne). Matthew
Panting, 17 14. John Ratcliff, 1738. William Adams,
i775> ^ theological controversialist and a student of
chemistry. William Sergrove, 1789. John Smyth, 1796.

Provosts of Worcester ("Gloucester Hall "till 17 14): Benjamin
Woodrofife, 1692, a good scholar and linguist, but a man of
a " magotty brain " (Prideaux) : Dean of Christ Church for a
few days. Richard Blechynden, 1 7 1 2. William Gower, 1736,
" neither a capable nor a popular Head." William Sheffield,
1777. Whittington Landon, 1795, V.-C. 1802: Keeper of
the Archives, 1796 ; Dean of Exeter, 1813.

Principals of Hertford ("Hart Hall" till 1739): William
Thornton, 1688. Thomas Smith, 1707. Richard Newton,
1 7 10, an energetic reformer: Canon of Christ Church, 1752.
William Sharpe, 1753. David Durell, 1757, V.-C. 1765-68.
Bernard Hodgson, 1775.

Principals of Magdalen Hall: Richard Adams, 1694. Digby
Cotes, 1 7 16: Public Orator, 1712. William Denison,

1745. William Denison, son of the foregoing, 1755.
Matthew Lamb, 1786. Henry Ford, 1788: Lord Almoner's
Professor of Arabic, 1780.

Principals of St. Mary Hall: William Wyatt, 1690. John
Hudson, 17 12. William King, 17 19, a strong Tory.
Thomas Nowell, 1764: Public Orator, 1760; Regius
Professor of Modern History, 1771.

Principals of St. Edmund Hall: John Mill, 1685, a learned
Greek Testament critic. Thomas Pearson, 1707. Henry

2 8(3 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Felton, 1722. Thomas Shaw, 1740. George Fothergill,
1 75 1. George Dixon, 1760. William Dowson, 1787.

Principals of New Inn Hall: Thomas Bay ley, 1684. John
Brabourne, 1709. George Wigan, 1726. De Blossiers
Tovey, 1732. William Walker, 1745. William Blackstone,
1 761 (Blackstone of the Commentaries): first Vinerian
Professor of English Law, 1758. Robert Chambers, 1766.

Principals of St. Alban Hall: Thomas Bouchier, 1679: Regius
Professor of Civil Law, 1672. James Bouchier, 1723 :
Regius Professor of Civil Law, 1712. Robert Leyborne,
1736. Francis Randolph, 1759. Thomas Winstanley,
1797: Camden Professor of Ancient History, 1790;
Laudian Professor of Arabic, 18 14.

INDEX

OF PERSONS, PLACES, AND THINGS CONNECTED
WITH OXFORD

[Names quoted as authorities only are omitted^

"Act of Grace," 248
"Acts," 186 seq.
Adams, F., 282

— R., 285

— W., 285
Addison, 96, 115
Aldrich, 61, 209, 283

All Souls', 28, 85, 91, 205
Amherst, 1 1
Anglesey (Lord), 192
Arran (Lord), 237
Atterbury, 62, 209, 283
Attwell, 282
"Austins," 175
Ayliffe, 243

Bagot, 63, 284

Baker, 284

Balliol, 33, 54, 55, 60, 103,

207, 241, 252, 253
Barker, 283
Baron, 281
Barton, 281
Bathurst, 284
Bayley, 282, 286
Beaufort (Duke of), 192
Beaumont, 33
Bentham, 53, 60, 125
Berdmore, 281
Bicester, 128
Bigg, 282

132,

" Bishop's Hole," 25

" Black Book," 246

Blackstone, 49, 94, 95, 286

Blacow, 253

Blechynden, 285

Bobart, 31

Bocardo, 24

Bodleian Library, 50, 150, 252

Botley Causeway, 25

Bouchier, J., 286

T., 286

Boulter, 283
Bowles, 127
Brabourne, 286
Bradshaw, 261, 284
Braithwaite, 282
Brasenose, 33, 55, 91
Brickenden, 285
Broad Walk, 33
Broken Heys, 25
Browne, John, 281

Joseph, 282

Burgesses, election of, 250
Burney, Miss, 278
Burton, 59, 258
Butler, E., 283
J., 61

Cambridge, 15
Canditch, 253
Carfax, 26

387

288 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Carmina Quadragesimalia, 77

Carter, 208, 282

Carty, 246

Cat Street, 27

Cavendish (Lord J.), 218

Cawley, 283

C. C. C, 29, 84, 155

Chambers, 286

Chapman, 284

Charlett, 210, 228, 281

Chemistry, 66

Christ Church, 29, 61, 62, 131, 157,

253. 278
Clarendon Building, 28
Clarke, 282
Cleaver, 283
Cobb, 282
Cockman, 207, 281
Codrington, 28
"Collectors," 178
College Politics, 252
Collins, J., 109

W., 19

CoUinson, 282

Colman, 124

Comitia Philologica, 188

" Comitial Exercises," 186

Commemoration, 191

Congregation, 168, 183

Coningsby, 261

Constitution Club, 238, 245

Convocation, 168, 216

Conybeare, 62, 159, 282, 284

Cooke, 283

"Corrupt resignation," 74

Cotes, 285

Coxed, 282

"Crossing," 156

Davey, 281

Degrees by diploma, 183

refused, 184

Delaune, 229, 284
Denison, W. (senr.), 285

(junr.), 285

Dennis, 284
Derham, 284
"Determination," 175
Dibdin, 140
" Disciple Masters," 84
Dixon, 286

Dobson, J., 282

W., 284

Doctors of Divinity, 190
Dodwell, 178
Dowson, 286
Dress, 164
" Drone Hall," 75
Drunkenness, 134
Dunster, 284
Durell, 269, 285

Edgcumbe, 282
Edwards, 284
Encaenia, 191, 277
Eveleigh, 180, 282
Exeter College, 62, 253

Felton, 286
Finch, 282
Fish Street, 25
"Flying Machines," 34
Ford, 285
Fothergill, G., 286

T., 282

Fox, 54

French teaching, 59
Fry, 284
Fullerton, 183
Fysher, 252

Games, 143 seq.

Gardiner, 184, 195, 206, 211, 243,

282
Gauntlett, 282
"Generals," 173
Gentlemen-commoners, 161
George i., 241

Ill,, 278

Gerard, 285

Gibbon, 11, 48, 53

Gibson, 282

Gower, 285

" Gownsman's Gallows," 35

"Gracious Days," 178

Graves, 64, 137

Gregory, 284

Gwyn, 283

Hall, 285
Halls, 27

INDEX

289

Halton, 282

Handel, 189

Handyside, 245

Hart Hall, 55, 60, 85, 102, 131

Harwar, 283

Hay ward, 282

Heads of Houses, 226, 249

Hearne, ll, 147 seq.^ 210, 239, 249

Hebdomadal Council, 169

"High Borlase," 252

Hoadly, 234

Hoare, 284

Hodges, 282

Hodgson, 285

Hody, 50

Hole, 282

Holland, 281

Holmes, 284

Holy Orders, 204

Holywell Street, 35

Home, 50, 283

Horner, 282

Huddesford, 253, 284

Hudson, 50, 151

Hunt, 281

Hurman, 283

Hutchins, 282

" Inceptors," 186
Isham, Edmund, 282
Euseby, 282

Jackson, 63, 160, 180, 214, 284
Jacobites, 224, 241, 254 seq., 262
James, J., 64,65, \l^ seq.

II., 202

Jenner, 283
Jesus College, 196
Johnson, 63, 275
Jones, W., 284

Sir W., 50

"Juraments," 173

Kennett, 283
Kennicott, 7, 50, 120
King, 257, 277, 285

Lamb, 285

Lancaster, 81, 195, 211, 229, 282

Landon, 285

Landor, 126

Laudian Statutes, 44, 55, 173

Le Courayer, 191

Leigh, 252, 281

Leyborne, 286

Lincoln College, 62, 91, 267

Lisle, 285

Littlegate, 25

Logic, 65

Lowth, 49, 95

Lydall, 281

Macclesfield (Lord), 200, 203
Magdalen College, 19, 23, 29, 32,

48, 58, 59, 84, 91, 197, 232, 241
Maidwell, 45
Mander, 281
Markham, 158, 284
Marlborough (Duke of), 188
Marlow, 284
Married Fellows, 205
Martin, 281
Mather, 283
Matriculation, iii

subscription at, 217

Meadowcourt, 244 seq.

Mealtimes, loi, 130

Meare, 283

Merton College, 30, 32, 53, 105,

244
Methodists, 265 seq.

expulsion of, 269 seq.

Mill, 95, 285
Mitre Inn, 104, 130
"Moderators," 173
Moral Philosophy, 49
Moritz, 104
Morley, 282
Mortimer, 282
Musgrave, 282
Music, 136, 187

New College, 30, 54, 91, 243
New Examination Statute, 180
Newton, 55, 60, 113, 159, 285
Niblett, 282
"Noblemen," 164
Nowell, 270, 285

Oglander, 282
Oriel, 30, 92, 207

290 OXFORD IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Ormond (Duke of), 237
Osney, 25
Owen, H., 284
Col., 241

Panting, 285

Paradise Garden, 32, 122
Pardo, 284
Parks, 32
Parsons, 180, 281
"Parvisum," 173
Pa)aiter, 282
Peace of Paris, 192
Pearson, 285
"Pennyless Bench," 26
Pepper (Col.), 241
"Phalaris,"6l
Philipps, 126
Phipps, 237
Physic Garden, 31
Pietas Oxoniensis, 231

by R. Hill, 273

Port Meadow, 128
Powell, 136

Prideaux, 85, 100, 201, 226
Proctors, 49, 163, 245 seq.
Professors, 44 seq.
Pumell, 256, 282

Queen's College, 29, 53, 65, 91
Quodlibeticse disputationes, 175

Radcliffe, 257

Camera, 28

Randolph, F., 286

T., 160, 283

" Redeat " speech, 257
Restoration period, 199
Rewley, 25
Richards, 282
Robinson, 281
Rogers, 283

Routh, 35, 50, 224, 283
Rowing, 146
Royse, 282

Sacheverell, 115, 2-^2 seq.

St. Edmund Hall, 152

St. John's College, 30, 106, 131, 253

Savilian Professors, 187

Scott, J., 179

W.,59

Sergrove, 285
Servitors, 116 seq.
Sharpe, 285
Shaw, 286
Sheffield, 285
Shenstone, 64, 119, 124
Shippen, 153, 283
Shooting, 145
Smalridge, 209, 239, 283
"Smarts," 122
Smith, 285
Smyth, 285
Southgate, 25
Spence, 95
Stinton, 282
"Strings," 176
Sykes, 284

Tatham, 282

TerrcB Filius, 189, 1 93 seq.

Thelwall, 284

Thistlethwayt, 285

Thornton, 285

"Toasts," 32

Tovey, 286

Tracy, 282

Traffics, 282

Trinity College, 30, 84, 133

"Tuns," the, 128, 130

Turner, 283

Tutors, 53 seq.

UflFenbach, 23, 32, 50, 233
University College, 207, 210

"Vespers," 186
Vinerian Statute, 215
"Visitations," 203, 242

Wadham College, 30
Walker, W. (St. John's), 284

(New Inn Hall), 286

"Wall Lectures," 178

Wallis, 45

Wanley, 127

Wartons, the, 96

Weaver's Dancing School, 115

Webber, 282

INDEX

291

Wesleys, the, 24, 94, 265 seq.
Wetherell, 281
Whitefield, 65, 115, 267
Wigan, 286
Wigs, 124
Wills, 285
Wilson, 181
Winstanley, 286
Winter's Coffee-house, 254
Wise, 252

"Woodcock Club," 231
Woodroffe, 33, 285
Worcester College, 30, 85
Wyatt, 285
Wyndham, 284
Wynne, 284
Wyntle, 281

Yarborough, 283

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